


A Favor for a Favor

by NebulousMistress



Series: Let Slip the Hounds of the First Order [9]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, Star Wars: Phasma - Delilah S. Dawson
Genre: Brendol Hux's A+ Parenting, Conspiracy, Elements of an Eldritch Force, Force-Sensitive Original Character(s), Gen, Medical Procedures, Monster Armitage Hux, Murder, Non-Traditional Force Training, Patricide, Pre-Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Premeditated Murder with Interesting Weapons, Subterfuge, parnassos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:26:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25678831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NebulousMistress/pseuds/NebulousMistress
Summary: Phasma had planned on returning to Parnassos alone. Then opportunities presented themselves.An exchange of favors, an offer of alliance, promises written in blood.
Series: Let Slip the Hounds of the First Order [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1698706
Comments: 29
Kudos: 41





	1. Volunteers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first scene here is directly caused by this tweet by [Motivational Hux](https://twitter.com/MotivationalHux):
> 
> <https://twitter.com/MotivationalHux/status/1281057164329578496>

FR-2116 held the droid by its head as FN-2304 wrapped the repair tape around it even as it beeped and whined. “You want to help, don’t you?” FR-2116 crooned. “You like helping.”

The droid beeped and whirred and protested. BB-3 liked helping, it really did. But not like this. It wasn’t even sure what was going on or how it happened.

This all began when it rolled out of a shipment meant for the _Absolution_. It found itself on the floor of the cargo bay unable to climb back into the crate with all of the other BB units bound for the newer Star Destroyer. It wandered the corridors looking for someone to help it get back to its assigned duties but the old Star Destroyer wasn’t designed for BB droids and it got lost. Then it ran into these two Stormtroopers in black armor. It was programmed to defer to the Stormtroopers in black armor to a degree but not to this degree. Not like this.

BB-3 rolled in all directions but it was no use. Somehow these two Stormtroopers held it up by its head so all of its rolling meant nothing. It supposed it could drop the magnetic connection between its head and its ball and then roll away but then they would still have its head and that was just as bad. Now they were taping knives to its head and it didn’t understand why.

“Shhh,” FN-2304 shushed. “If anyone hears you you won’t be able to help us. You want to help, don’t you?”

BB-3 beeped in question.

FR-2116's HUD informed him it was asking how exactly the tape and the knives would help. “Here’s the thing,” he explained. “We have a friend who needs help with some situational awareness training. We want you to help him.”

BB-3’s beeps were no less annoyed now than before as it rolled in pointless struggle.

“I know that’s not your normal duty,” FR-2116 admitted. “But you’re an astromech droid! You’re good at everything you put your processing units to. And you’re just the right height for this. You’re not too loud, you’re agile, you’re perfect. And I’m sure you’ve always wondered what it’s like to be able to fight back. That’s why we’re giving you the knives.”

BB-3 whirred and chirped, its rolling changing to more of a sway.

“He’ll be alright,” FN-2304 promised. “He’s wearing armor. He’s unarmed. And if you’re exactly the big and bad droid we know you to be, he knows how to run. Doesn’t that sound fun, making a powerful, scary Hound run with his tail between his legs?”

BB-3 stopped rolling. It hummed and chirped contemplatively.

“Okay,” FR-2116 said, taking the droid’s acquiescence as the tentative agreement it was. “We’re taking you to the locker room. He should be out of the shower and back in his armor by now. He doesn’t have his blasters so he won’t be able to hurt you, I promise. We’ll set you down inside the door. From there it’s up to you.”

BB-3 beeped a question.

“No, don’t announce yourself,” FN-2304 said. “Just roll in there and go for it. See if you can poke him in the back of the knee.”

“Do we want to hurt him?” FR-2116 asked.

“It’s just a stab wound, you can patch him later.”

FR-2116 had to agree that sounded fair. BB-3 beeped in assent, allowing FN-2304 to finish taping knives to its head. Once the knives were in place FR-2116 lifted the droid into his arms, cradling the droid’s large ball and leaving the head free to look around.

They carried the droid to the lift as though carrying a BB droid with knives taped to its head was an entirely normal occurrence. The black armor would give most of the Stormtroopers pause but the officers had no such reason not to report them. BB-3 beeped happily as though this was all part of the plan as it watched officers gape open-mouthed before talking into comms.

The first pair of Stormtroopers sent to detain them didn’t even try, instead laughing as they watched two black-armored Hounds carrying a cheerful BB unit with knives taped to its head. The second pair of Stormtroopers paused when they heard the BB unit’s happy beeping and their HUDs translated the sounds as an enthusiastic ‘I’m helping!’ The third pair of Stormtroopers didn’t even make it around the corner before the pair of Hounds entered the lift and made it off the level.

“We’re getting teeth for this,” FN-2304 warned. The warning’s impact was lessened by the amusement in his voice.

“Worth it,” FR-2116 agreed.

The lift opened and they carried the BB unit to the Hound squad locker room even as the spectacle started again with officers gaping, scowling, and talking into comms.

The locker room was almost empty.

One man sat on the bench, his perpetually scuffed armor half-assembled. He wore his lower underarmor, boots, greaves, and butt plate. His tags dangled against his bare chest. The towel over his head obscured his eyes as he scrubbed the last of the water out of his hair.

FR-2116 gently set BB-3 on the locker room floor as FN-2304 placed his gloved fingers over the front of his helm in a ‘shush’ motion. BB-3 made no sound as it scoped out its prey, leaned down, then rolled right in.

*****

RX-3081 rubbed his towel over his head to dry his hair. Per Dr. Otero’s instruction he hadn’t cut it since giving himself over to the man for whatever training the scientist could provide.

The last few weeks had not been easy. Meditation was a fancy word for sleeping while sitting up as far as RX-3081 was concerned. Dr. Otero made him study complex ideas of philosophy and chaos that barely made sense. He understood there was a Light side and a Dark side of the Force but he still didn’t understand the difference or how both sides were accessed or why someone was only supposed to access one but not the other. He’d trained as a Stormtrooper and then as a Hound, he understood the benefit of learning any and every weapon made available to him. Surely the Force could be thought of in the same way.

He sighed and scrubbed the last of the water from his hair. He was sure he’d missed whatever lesson Captain Hux had scheduled for today. It was nothing but lessons and Individual Duties lately as Hux was busy on Ilum and he with Dr. Otero and the rest of them--

RX-3081 felt something. Something coming for him. Something strange. He jumped up onto the bench just as a… droid… attacked him? Yes, that was a BB droid with knives taped to its head. A BB droid that was trying to stab him while beeping triumphantly.

He could hear the laughter outside. Fine then.

RX-3081 grabbed his own knife with its thigh sheath then jumped off the bench and rolled out of the path of the BB unit. He pulled the knife and brandished it at the BB unit. “You wanna go then?” he warned. “Let’s go.”

The BB unit leaned down, squealed in delight, and charged.

RX-3081 parried the charging droid with his own knife. It rolled and spun, slashing at him as he dodged and blocked and forgot all of his own problems. There was something cathartic in giving himself over to the ridiculousness of knife fighting with a gleeful BB droid. It was getting good at it too, learning his movements and compensating for them. But he wasn’t going to lose to a BB droid.

He didn’t notice as the laughter stopped.

He did notice the voice.

“Explain yourself.”

RX-3081 stood at attention at the voice. BB-3 took the opening for what it was and stabbed him in the knee. RX-3081 jumped at the stab, breaking attention. He grabbed the droid by the head and braced it there, holding it in place while it spun futilely against the floor. “Sir,” RX-3081 allowed.

Captain Hux scowled in the doorway. Behind him FN-2304 and FR-2116 looked as sheepish as they could in full armor, it might have had something to do with the six white armored Stormtroopers behind them with weapons lazily pointed at them.

“This is why we can’t have droids,” Hux warned.

“Yes sir,” both FR-2116 and FN-2304 said.

BB-3 beeped something that sounded almost like a protest.

Hux glanced at the Stormtroopers. “Have the droid returned to its post,” he ordered. “Leave the knives with me.”

“Yes sir.” White armored Stormtroopers lowered their weapons and entered the locker room. They unwrapped the tape from the plaintive droid that still beeped ‘but I was helping’. They handed the knives off to Hux before two lifted the droid into their arms and carried it off as it whined sadly.

With the Stormtroopers gone Hux growled low, one hand coming up to rub the bridge of his nose. After all that he had only one word. “Why?”

“Dr. Otero mentioned Lord Vader used training droids,” FN-2304 offered as a weak excuse.

Hux gave him a glare that told him he was not impressed. “I guarantee this is not what he meant.”

“Well, no, but RX-3081 has been so… affected lately, we thought…” FR-2116 didn’t finish his sentence as Hux turned his unimpressed glare on him, instead falling quiet. “Sorry, sir,” he whispered.

Hux growled under his breath. “Sim Room 23,” he snapped. FN-2304 and FR-2116 filed out. RX-3081 started to but Hux stopped him with a glare. “Get dressed first.” Hux then stalked out of the locker room, leaving RX-3081 alone with his thoughts again.

He wasn’t sure if this was the chaos that Dr. Otero mentioned or not.

*****

RX-3081 was the last to arrive in Simulation Room 23. He found FR-2116 and FN-2304 standing with their helms off as Captain Hux paced before them. An ominously tall Stormtrooper in white armor stood behind, watching the scene intently.

The room was otherwise empty. Nobody wore a neural amplifier and nobody monitored from the technician bay. Even the lights were set to manual, all of them on and glaringly bright in the normally darkened room.

RX-3081 tried to take his place next to his comrades but Hux snarled at him. The tiny pinprick points of his pupils left him with a strange and wild look, eyes solid and green and RX-3081 had a hard time separating reality from what he Saw as the alabaster hound snarled at him. Then it was gone and Hux pointed to the tall Stormtrooper. “Stand and wait with Phasma,” Hux ordered. “I’ll get to you later.”

RX-3081 nodded and stepped away, trying not to flee as he left his squad to their fates.

“They stole a droid,” Phasma mused.

“I didn’t know they stole it,” RX-3081 whispered, not wanting to interfere.

Hux continued his pacing, only a few disconnected words breaking through the hissing and the snarling. FN-2304 had the audacity to speak, protesting they hadn’t stolen anything. They’d merely found it wandering alone and took advantage under the universal rules of salvage. Hux’s response was to tackle the man, throwing him to the ground with his teeth around FN-2304’s neck. FR-2116 shuddered and tried not to watch.

“Ah, that makes more sense,” Phasma allowed. “They acquired it.”

RX-3081 hummed in assent. He took a deep breath to center himself but that had the opposite effect. The forms on the ground changed, images shifting to their shadows as he Saw a pair of tuk’ata in a struggle for dominance. He shuddered, trying to shake off the Sight of it. It was easier just to close his eyes and ignore everything.

Hux pulled away from FN-2304, leaving the man laying on the floor in his jumbled armor. Hux slunk toward FR-2116, not even bothering to stand as he lurked on hands and feet and RX-3081 made the mistake of opening his eyes. Hux didn’t even bother hiding it anymore, shedding his humanity in favor of his feral Arkanan heritage. He watched in vague horror as Hux stalked around FR-2116 as the Hound continued FN-2304’s defense of their actions.

“We got its permission,” FR-2116 insisted. “We told the droid what we wanted it to do. We didn’t explain why, we didn’t have to. It was eager to help. It agreed to help us.”

Hux stopped his stalking behind FR-2116, crouching low and waving his rear end. RX-3081 knew a crest and tail would follow that slow wave if he sought to Look and chose not to, not even as Hux bounded forward, leapt onto FR-2116’s back, and pulled him down to the floor. Hux wasted no time as he pinned his Hound, used his long limbs to lock him to the ground, and grabbed the back of his neck with his mouth.

“You allow him to dominate you like this,” Phasma observed. “What if you fought back?”

RX-3081 drew his fingertips along the throat seal of his own armor. “I fought back once,” he admitted. “Hux crushed my windpipe. The only reason I’m not dead is there were people willing to pull him off. I don’t believe anyone would pull him off now.”

“He chooses whether you live or die,” Phasma mused.

“It’s one reason we’re ruined for any other commander,” RX-3081 agreed. “We wouldn’t respect their choice or authority.”

Phasma contemplated those words as FR-2116 whined, a long high pitched sound that denoted more than just mere surrender. She cocked her head to watch as Hux’s limbs slowly loosened, unwrapping themselves from their holds, his hands instead moving to stroke and pet as his bite instead turned to languid licks.

Then Hux put weight on his hands and feet, lifting himself off of FR-2116 as he fixed his eyes on RX-3081.

“Uh oh,” RX-3081 realized. “I wasn’t involved. I had no say at all! They sent the droid after me.”

Hux jumped, or perhaps it was RX-3081’s Sight playing tricks on him because there was no way something human-shaped should be that graceful on four limbs. Phasma wisely took a step to the side as Hux quickly slithered behind RX-3081 and draped against him. Hands curled around his pauldrons, chest pressed to his back, the hiss of a breaking seal betrayed the removal of his helm and the low purr on his neck had RX-3081 closing his eyes against his confused senses. It didn’t help as he could feel a tail that wasn’t there, claws that didn’t exist, could even feel the flick of ears and for a moment he doubted his own humanity. Then it ended as Hux pulled away, back to his feet as he went back to pacing as though nothing had happened.

“You underssstand,” Hux hissed.

RX-3081 shook his head. He barely understood anything anymore. But Phasma answered and he realized the question hadn’t been meant for him at all.

“They’re yours,” Phasma said.

“They are,” Hux agreed. “That meansss you understand what happens if they don’t come back.”

Phasma considered him but didn’t answer.

“Come back from what?” FN-2304 asked. He propped himself up on his elbows so he could see the action without getting up.

Hux stalked close to Phasma, pressing himself against her armor. It could have been sensual if Phasma reacted at all as Hux curled up and around her armor to pull himself up to meet the black eyes of her helm. “I do not tossss my men away like my father does,” Hux warned. “I worked hard to turn them into thissss. I would not wassste that on someone who would carelessly tossss away assets.”

“Are they worth the trouble?” Phasma asked.

Hux purred through bared teeth. “They each have skillsss that suit your needs. My Hounds keep secretsss that would see me executed if my father knew. They have proven their ability to do what mussst be done. They have earned that black armor, more so than Cardinal earned his red. But then you already knew that. You’ve ssseen firsthand what my father favors in his lapdogs.”

Phasma finally reacted, reaching up with one hand to wrap it around Hux’s neck. She pulled him off of her but didn’t put him down, instead holding him up by his own neck. Hux’s feet dangled above the deck, toes trying to grab at the floor they couldn’t reach. His hands went to the single white gauntlet at his neck, a low murr of annoyance in his throat as she still didn’t let go.

“You’re letting me do this,” Phasma realized. She chuckled darkly, a surprisingly feminine sound as she held the Captain by his throat. She could squeeze or he could tear himself from her grip to rend her with his teeth. Neither happened. “You’re letting me take them.”

“I want you to,” Hux purred. “You know why. Trust them as I do. I assure you, if my trust is misplaced I’ll be the first to know.”

FN-2304 and FR-2116 watched each other with confused expressions. RX-3081’s shock showed he didn’t know any more than they did. What was going on? Why didn’t Hux fight back? What were they talking about?

Phasma slowly lowered Hux to the deck, allowing him to get his feet under himself. He straightened his uniform, tugging it back into some semblance of a human shape. Then he turned to address his flabbergasted Hounds. “I’m so pleased the three of you volunteered for this mission,” he said.

“Volunteered for what now?” RX-3081 asked.

“We’ve been volunteered,” FR-2116 realized. “I expected the teeth but this? I didn’t think the BB droids were **that** new.”

“Do we at least get a briefing?” FN-2304 asked.

“Phasma will be leading this mission,” Hux said, gesturing to the giant Stormtrooper like she hadn’t just dangled him by his own neck. “I leave you in her hands.” Then he left, blatantly ignoring the way his Hounds all gaped at him like he’d gone insane.

FN-2304 recovered first. He got to his feet and fixed his armor. “Are we going in blind or do we have information?” he asked. “Targets? Tasks?”

“Not here,” Phasma said. “Prepare yourselves for battle then meet me at your vessel. We’ll depart in your shuttle.”

“Can you fly it?” FR-2116 asked. “Unless we’re bringing TT-1098 along with.”

“I will fly,” Phasma said.

“Okay,” RX-3081 allowed. “I have active assignments I can’t neglect, will they interfere?”

“What is their nature?”

RX-3081 looked down. He didn’t like the idea of admitting this but Hux clearly trusted her with their lives. “I’m Force-sensitive,” he admitted.

Phasma cocked her head at him. “What’s that?”

FN-2304 and FR-2116 looked at her like they’d just been punched.

RX-3081 looked at her in shock. He didn’t detect a single note of malice or subterfuge from her, only curiosity. She truly didn’t know about the Force. “It won’t interfere,” RX-3081 said, only realizing after he said it that he did feel confident. It… wouldn’t interfere. Best of all, she didn’t look at him like he was a freak or a security risk. 

“Be sure that it doesn’t,” Phasma commanded. She looked around at her three black armored Hounds. “We leave in one hour. Prepare yourselves.”

“Yes…” FR-2116 and FN-2304 fumbled for what to call her. Calling her by her name seemed too informal.

“‘Sir’ will do,” Phasma allowed.

“Yes sir, thank you sir,” FN-2304 said.

She collected her ‘yes sir’s from the other two, only needing to glance in their direction to gain them. She then nodded and left the room.

RX-3081 sighed in relief. Then he turned his annoyance on the other two. “What have you gotten me into?” he lamented.

FN-2304 shrugged. “Maybe it won’t be so bad.”

FR-2116 agreed. “It can’t be worse than anything else we’ve done.”

They had one hour to collect what they needed. Weapons, datapads, study materials, FR-2116’s med kit, armor, supplies…

They all left the Simulation Room in a hurry. One hour wasn’t much time.


	2. The Dead Lands

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I originally did a writeup on the Parnassos Beetles back in May: [On Parnassos Beetles](https://nebulousmistress.tumblr.com/post/620593794684010496/on-parnassos-beetles)
> 
> Because the idea of only one single beetle type made me go |:[
> 
> Definitely a bug warning in this one. I own no fucks when getting inventive.

Hyperspace swirled blue and white as the _Fenris_ sped on its way out of First Order controlled space, along lesser used hyperspace lanes to a world abandoned by the Republic.

Parnassos.

Phasma programmed the ship’s movements, inputting every turn and dip and correction into the computer to execute automatically. They could take their time to get there.

Until then she had the three Hounds in their black armor to contend with. RX-3081 and FR-2116 were in the back going over some of RX-3081’s active assignments. FN-2304 sat up front with her, watching from the co-pilot’s seat as she handled the controls with ease.

“What’s back on Parnassos?” he asked.

Phasma didn’t answer with words. Instead she connected a datapad to the flight computer; it was programmed by Captain Hux to autodownload certain files from the First Order HoloNet. The datapad beeped after a few moments. She unplugged it and handed it to FN-2304. “This is everything the First Order has on file concerning Parnassos,” she said. “Study it. Tell me what you find.”

FN-2304 took the datapad but he didn’t read it. Instead he looked at it then to Phasma then back at the datapad.

“Is there a problem?” Phasma asked icily.

“It’s your homeworld,” he said, matching her icy tone. “Why not tell me yourself? Surely you know more than the First Order ever could.”

Phasma looked at him, the blank black lenses of her white helm betraying none of her thoughts or emotions. That unnerved FN-2304; he could read any Stormtrooper in full armor but he couldn’t read her. Still he stared her down, using the blank mask of his own black helm to his advantage. The both of them stayed like that for far too long, neither of them backing down.

Phasma conceded first. “I suspect the First Order’s information doesn’t match the reality,” she allowed.

FN-2304 nodded. “Why not correct it yourself?” he asked.

Phasma looked away, out into hyperspace. “Why would I waste a tactical advantage by correcting poor intelligence?”

FN-2304 nodded. She had a point and if they were indeed heading to Parnassos they might need to get their stories straight to avoid losing that advantage. Not that FN-2304 expected they’d find much on Parnassos, unless he ever needed to irradiate something. He settled down against the co-pilot’s console and opened the datapad’s file storage. He scrolled past solar system data, galactic location, Con Star Mining reports, and the orbital defense grid. He knew all of those from Captain Hux’s debriefs before they were assigned the _Absolution_ to rescue General Hux. Speaking of…

‘Untitled Tactical Assessment: Parnassos’ by General Brendol Hux.

FN-2304 opened that file and began to read.

 _Parnassos has no strategic importance_ , the report read. Brendol clearly hadn’t felt like mincing words when he wrote this. _The people are savage. The destruction of the ecosystem by a Con Star Mining Corporation nuclear accident has destroyed any use this planet might have provided the First Order._

_Potable fresh water is difficult to acquire without access to deep wells kept guarded by the remains of Con Star personnel. These company personnel have split into city-states and roving clans that compete for the planet’s dwindling resources and technology. The natives have lost most of the skills necessary for life in a civilized galaxy and lack even the most rudimentary of education. If Parnassos had children this would make them an ideal seed world for the Stormtrooper program as the First Order could provide education, food, medical supplies. Unfortunately the observed birth rate is well below replacement rate. See the dossier on the Scyre Clan for details._

“Brendol clearly didn’t think much of your planet,” FN-2304 mused. He held the datapad out for Phasma. “Want to read it?”

Phasma merely looked at him with that blank Stormtrooper helm. FN-2304 took the hint and pulled it away.

“Summarize it,” she allowed. “If you must.”

FN-2304 felt the hairs on his neck stand on end as he figured it out. Brendol’s report had all but said it outright. Phasma was barely a year off of Parnassos. It was entirely possible that with everything else Brendol expected of her, she hadn’t yet had the time to learn how to read.

“Parnassos has three main continents,” FN-2304 said, summarizing what Brendol deigned to put into his report. “The ruins of settlements are found on all three continents. Surface scans show most everything abandoned except for a few city states on the southern continent. Brendol lists Arratu Station as destroyed by ‘internal conflict’.”

Phasma snorted.

“Didn’t the general have us level that one?” FN-2304 mused.

“Indeed.”

“Listed hazards of the planet include the people, the wildlife, radiation, and a persistent bacterial infiltration that causes even the smallest wounds to fester. No wonder children are so hard to come by.”

“Do you believe it to be related?”

“FR-2116 would know better than I,” FN-2304 admitted. “But childbirth often causes internal wounds.”

Phasma hummed as she considered the information. Brendol didn’t take Siv’s warnings about his wounds seriously when they were on Parnassos, clearly he never had. ‘Persistent bacterial infiltration’ didn’t sound anything like the lichen’s poison that she’d used against her enemies. “What about the wildlife?” she asked.

FN-2304 scanned the files. He found one named ‘Flora and Fauna of Parnassos’, also by General Brendol Hux. He did a quick scan of all of the files on the datapad and found all of the recent ones originated from Brendol’s hand. “Did you contribute any knowledge to the First Order archives?” he asked.

“I was never asked to.”

FN-2304 nodded as he opened the wildlife file. The entire plant section was a one line note that said ‘Flora: none notable’. The animal section had a little more.

“Skinned wolves. Quadrupedal canine. Pursuit predator. Rudimentary pack behavior observed. Susceptible to blaster fire. This says they look like long legged dogs covered in skin tumors.

“Riding lizards. Quadrupedal lizard. Domesticated. Likely imported by Con Star Mining.

“Parnassos beetles. Insect. Subterranean burrowing beetles. Attracted to water. Venomous bite, deadly. Brendol advises against peeing on the sand.”

“He tried that once,” Phasma recalled, sounding almost fond. “All types of water beetles are attracted to salty liquid. He panicked when the beetles crawled out of the ground at his feet. He came running back to camp with the beetles following the trail of urine he left behind him and ordered his Stormtroopers to shoot the insects while he hid in a speeder.” She paused, considering. “Is that all it says?”

“There’s very little here,” FN-2304 said, scrolling through the short file. All of the files were short. It seemed Brendol had not found much on Parnassos aside from Phasma and so didn’t care enough to give the First Order any details of the planet.

“Then we have more to work with than I thought,” Phasma realized. She checked the flight computer. All was good with the hyperdrive. The _Fenris_ would reach Parnassos in a day’s travel.

*****

_One of the greatest misconceptions about the Force is the idea of Light and Dark. Light and Dark are religious concepts, ideas of morality and judgement enforced onto a purely neutral force of nature. The Force doesn’t recognize a difference between Light and Dark so neither should you._

_Rather the difference between Light and Dark is one of will. The Force can be understood to have a will of its own, the Jedi’s vaunted ‘Will of the Force’ that they sought to enact. That’s all the Light is, the act of giving oneself over to the Force to become its puppet. Giving yourself to the Light is easy but even the easiest task can be made easier. The Jedi simplified the act of giving themselves up through the development of the Jedi Serenities._

_By comparison, enforcing your own will over the Force is the definition of Darkness. In such a state, you will have full control over your own power, your own mind, and the Force you wield. The normal and accepted way to accomplish this as a human being is through the Sith Passions._

_The theory behind Serenities and Passions is simple: the more emotion you experience at any given moment, the more grounded you are in your own mind. That grounding allows you to maintain control over yourself and the Force while you wield it._

_I will not teach you the Jedi Serenities. From what I’ve heard you already have a grasp of them. Or rather, I suppose the Light already has a fairly firm grasp of you._

RX-3081 lay sprawled out on the port bench with his datapad in his hands and a commlink on the bench next to him. The comm played a recorded hologram from his datapad’s files, a lecture Dr. Otero recorded and sent to him within a few short days of returning from Jedha. It was intended to be RX-3081’s introduction to the philosophies of the Force but he felt he needed an introduction to this introduction. The idea that the Force itself could have a will of its own was unnerving and difficult to believe and yet it explained Jedha, it explained Praxis, it explained Mestare, it explained every interaction he’d ever had with it. He still didn’t like it, it meant the Force wanted the Empire to fall. It meant the Force wanted the Outer Rim to suffer. It meant the Force wanted him to have to fight it for control over his own mind.

The door to the cockpit hissed and RX-3081 glanced up to see white armor. Phasma moved with a predator’s grace and a stormtrooper’s presence to the caf dispenser to pour herself a cup. While there she grabbed a ration bar.

RX-3081 paused the lecture. The hologram flickered, Dr. Otero paused with his hands raised in mid-gesture. He watched as Phasma sat across from him on the starboard bench, placed her meal on the bench beside her, then removed her helmet.

He remembered her from the _Absolution_. The dusky color of radiation poisoning was gone, replaced by a paleness that spoke of not enough time under the ship-standard UV lamps. Her white-blonde hair, once lank and matted in dirty blonde dreadlocks, was now shorn as short as any Stormtrooper’s. At least the eyes were the same, deep blue and hard, exactly as expressive as the black lenses of her helm.

“You’re Force-sensitive,” she said. “We have time. Explain it.” She unwrapped her ration bar and gnawed off a corner.

RX-3081 wasn’t sure he was the one to explain anything about the Force, he barely understood it himself. But Phasma kept him fixed in that hard stare as she took another bite of her ration bar and somehow that made him more nervous than watching Hux eat ever had. He supposed he could try.

“I’m still learning myself,” he admitted. “But what do you know about the Force?”

“Never heard of it.”

RX-3081 nodded. That gave him somewhere to start. “The Force is an energy field,” he began. “It surrounds us, penetrates us, it binds the galaxy together. Like how hyperspace is everywhere. We use ships with hyperdrives to access hyperspace. Once we have that access we can use hyperspace to our advantage. The Force is a little bit like that. Certain people are Force-sensitive, meaning they can access the Force and use it to their advantage.”

“What do you do with it?”

RX-3081 was surprised his analogy made sense. It had taken three metaphors and two complex explanations from Dr. Otero before the scientist finally hit upon the hyperspace analogy and even then RX-3081 wasn’t entirely sure he understood it. “Right now? Not much. I can’t do anything big or flashy with it.”

Phasma arched an eyebrow at him.

“I use it to augment my sniping,” he admitted. “I can find hidden things. I can See things that aren’t physically there.”

“I wasn’t aware ‘seeing things’ is a power,” Phasma mused as she drank her caf. “If that’s the case I know a purple seaweed in the Parnassos shallows that will connect you to this Force.”

RX-3081 snorted. Somehow he figured the purple seaweed was just hallucinogenic and not an actual Force-thing. 

“You’re still learning. What will you be able to do with it once you’re fully trained?”

RX-3081 shrugged. “It depends. Dr. Otero is trying to teach me the theory but there’s no one I can learn the practicals from. I have to learn it all on my own. I suppose I can try to learn the common talents, lifting heavy objects and such.”

Phasma finished her ration bar and washed it down with the last of her caf. “I see techs do that on the flight deck all the time.”

“No, I mean lift them from a distance. With my mind.”

Phasma paused, trying to figure that one out. It made no sense. Lifting required grabbing, grabbing required leverage. Whether hands or machine or droid or load lifter or TIE rack arm, leverage was leverage and it was physical. This idea of lifting things with one’s mind didn’t make sense. Or rather, it made so little sense she dismissed it as an idea entirely. Finding things made sense. Shooting better made a lot of sense. Seeing things made sense even if it didn’t sound useful. “Stick to things that make sense,” she suggested. She pulled her Stormtrooper helm back over her head and lay across the bench.

“Will I be disturbing you if I turn this back on?” RX-3081 asked, gesturing to his comm.

“Go ahead,” she said dismissively.

Phasma folded one arm over her belly and another under her neck in a position RX-3081 recognized from his own time in the field. She was going to get some sleep. He figured she could just turn off the auditory system in her helm for silence and so allowed his lecture to resume.

_I am aware your Stormtrooper training makes it appealing to give yourself over to an outside force. You were trained to follow orders without question, to submit to the will of your superior officers. The Force must seem like the most superior officer of all in this regard. It would be easy to let it flow through you like a Jedi, to give yourself to the Light. You need to fight this urge with every fibre of your being._

_The Force is no benevolent master. It doesn’t have your best interests at heart. It isn’t like your Captain, it doesn’t care whether you live or die because it can always produce another just like you. It will control you without remorse, without regard for your own well-being, without regard for life or limb. It will walk you off of a cliff if you let it, the same as it led the Jedi to their deaths at the hands of their own armies._

_I know I’m asking much of you, child. I’m asking you to cast aside a lifetime of training in favor of your own selfish passions. But is what I’m asking any different than what Captain Hux asked of you when he had you pulled from your cadre?_

_In the meantime, I encourage you to use your connection to the Force at every opportunity. The Sith preferred to seduce their apprentices from the Jedi ranks for a reason, because it’s easier to teach someone how to control the Force after they’ve already developed their connection to it. Ask your Captain for opportunities to use the Force on missions in safe, controlled ways. Ask the rest of your squad to help you, I have the feeling they’ll be plenty willing. Ask your Captain for a temporary transfer to Ilum, Dr. Bescom would be more than happy to put you to work in the kyber lab. Develop your connection any way you can but keep me apprised. Do let me know what Force-powers you choose to develop. There’s more, much more to the Force than just lifting rocks._

_Once you realize this we will begin to work on your control. For the safety of yourself and us all, we_ **_will_ ** _teach you how to access the power of Darkness._

Phasma took care not to move, to pretend to be asleep. She knew others often lowered their guard when they assumed she was asleep, it worked to her advantage on Parnassos and in the Stormtrooper barracks. And here.

Instead she listened and considered.

*****

The _Fenris_ landed on a blank endless desert.

Reddish gray sand blew in drifts across the Dead Lands. Radiation alerts flashed across the viewport’s AR display, warning them of one and a half rads per hour. First Order safety parameters recommended they limit their time in this desert to a mere three and a half hours.

Phasma had no such plan to hold to that limit. Indeed, her plans involved a great deal more time than that.

FR-2116 read the readouts on the display with trepidation. “How long will we be here?” he asked.

“Much longer than is recommended,” Phasma said.

“Is that safe?” he demanded. “We’re risking radiation poisoning. Do you **want** a recall reaction?”

Phasma looked at him with her blank white helm while she tapped the controls that opened the hatch. Cold wind blew into the hold of the _Fenris_ , bringing with it sand and radioactive fallout. FR-2116 looked at her in shock before pulling his helm on to try and block out what radiation he could. Now the entire ship would have to be deconned. All four of them. All of their armor. All of their gear. They might not get this ship back once the decon team was done with it! The decon team had certainly done a number on the atmospheric assault lander they originally brought to Parnassos and the _Fenris_ was going to be far more contaminated than that.

“I’m counting on it,” Phasma said. Then she unstrapped herself and left the cockpit while FR-2116 gaped behind her.

He couldn’t believe he’d heard that right. He shook his head and followed.

Parnassos was exactly as the Hounds remembered it save for one detail. There was supposed to be a crashed ship here, a very shiny crashed ship. The _Alpha Imperialis_ was once a replica of the Emperor’s personal yacht, prized by the First Order and then crashed by General Brendol Hux. His own son Captain Armitage Hux had been assigned the _Absolution_ in order to rescue Brendol from this radiation-blighted world. They expected to rescue Brendol and a squad of Stormtroopers, instead all they managed to bring back was Brendol himself, a little girl, and the woman in white armor next to them.

Phasma.

Phasma strode down the ramp to the sand below. She crouched down and ran her gloved hand across the sand. She picked up a fistful and let it run through her fingers, watching it trail off in the wind. Then she turned to the three men in black armor behind her, members of Captain Hux’s personal squad loaned to her for this mission for reasons she wouldn’t disclose. She pointed to the one in the middle, the one in dull scuffed armor. RX-3081.

“The _Alpha Imperialis_ is under this sand,” she said. “I need access to it. You will find it.”

RX-3081 stepped back. “How?” he demanded.

“You say the Force allows you to find things. Your own teacher told you to practice at every opportunity. It will take us hours to find the ship by hand even with sensors.”

“We don’t have that kind of time,” FR-2116 warned. “We’ll hit our yearly safe dose in less than four hours out here. That doesn’t count all the damage done by **leaving the ship hatch OPEN**!” FR-2116’s complaint rose to a full scream as he reached the end of his statement.

Phasma glanced at the shuttle’s open ramp and open hatch then back at the three Hounds. “Radiation sickness is part of the plan,” she said.

“What plan?” FN-2304 demanded. “Why are we here?”

“I need something from Parnassos,” Phasma said. “Your Captain needs something from me. We came to an agreement, that’s why we’re here. We can waste time standing here or RX-3081 can get to work finding the _Alpha Imperialis_.”

RX-3081 grumbled. He left FR-2116 to seethe in his own impotent anger, instead stepping out from under the shadow of the _Fenris_. He pulled off his helmet as he meandered off in whatever direction his feet chose. There was a metallic taste to the air, something he instinctively disliked. The air smelled cold, dry, dusty, like the corpses of Mestare. 

He figured he knew what Phasma wanted. She wanted a demonstration of the Force. She wanted to see exactly what this ‘Force’ could do. And given he’d already told her ‘finding things’ was a talent of his there was little he could do but try.

He took a deep breath of dry metallic air and closed his eyes. He could smell blood on the wind, the echoes of past battles. A hint of hot metal and acrid smoke. He heard the soft thump of his helmet impacting the sand as it slipped from his fingers. He shivered at the feeling of desperation, the dying screams of a clan, a station, a world set aflame. His feet dragged against the sand as it clawed at him, pulled at him, miring him in his own footsteps.

A scream of tortured metal, the roar of labored engines, the impact against soft sand that splashed like water, the injured who never had a chance against the radioactive wasteland. Stormtroopers abandoned by the general who was supposed to go down with the ship, who instead stole the escape pod. So many could have been saved if only the general had waited, had allowed them to save themselves, instead he ejected the pod early.

Each step felt like an ordeal as he sank into liquid sand, as tiny grains poured beneath the plates of his knees and thighs but he had to keep going...

The sand rumbled and then exploded. Skeletal hands wearing the remains of white armor reached up from beneath, gripping at his belt, his breastplate, his pauldrons, pulling and grasping and dragging and desperate to be found. The sand rippled around him as he sank. He grasped at nothing, at anything, flailing to stay afloat only for those hands to grab his arms and pull, dragging him down down down...

“Hey, you okay?” FN-2304 asked.

RX-3081 blinked as reality shifted, nausea pulling at his belly as the horizon spun. When it stopped he realized he wasn’t mired in the sand to his breastplate. There were no dead Stormtroopers dragging him beneath. Instead he knelt on the sand of Parnassos, a patch of sand no different than any other, FN-2304 standing next to him with one hand on his shoulder. And yet he could **feel** the difference below.

“Brendol ejected the escape pod early,” RX-3081 said. “He could have waited for the others to join him in the pod. Instead he panicked and his entire squad died.” He looked down at the sand below him and knew exactly where the _Alpha Imperalis_ was. “I found them.”

“He says he found it!” FN-2304 called.

RX-3081 looked back at the others. His footsteps meandered across the desert, his dragging feet leaving great furrows through the sand. FR-2116 looked worried but his stance was one of artificial bravery as he tried to act like this was all normal. But Phasma…

For the first time he thought he could read Phasma under her armor. She was pleased.

*****

Despite finding the _Alpha Imperialis_ , getting to it proved difficult. Windblown sand had covered the ship over the past year and the desert did not give up its prize so easily. Digging took hours, the dull swish and thud and strike of shovels against the sand becoming a monotony broken only by the scuttle of dozens of shining gold and silver and red and black-green beetles that Phasma insisted they kill without hesitation.

RX-3081 could feel their doubt creeping toward him, like ink spreading through water. Tendrils of it poked him, prodded, brushed at his mind. Maybe he was wrong, maybe they should have used the scanners.

Phasma stabbed the ground with the spade of her shovel to seat it in the ground so she could get the scanners. The sound of it gave her pause, the odd metallic ‘clink’. She dropped to her knees and swiped the sand away from the shining metal plates of the _Alpha Imperialis_.

RX-3081 sighed in relief. FN-2304 clapped him on the shoulder.

“Never doubted you,” FN-2304 said.

“Yeah you did,” RX-3081 countered. “I could feel it from here.”

“Wait, you could?” FR-2116 realized. “Huh. You must be getting better.”

“Feeling the thoughts of others is a power of the Force?” Phasma asked.

“Usually,” FR-2116 said.

Phasma considered the Hound before her with his non-regulation hair, his helm on the sand behind them, his armor scratched and scuffed beyond all understanding. Not even the Stormtroopers who died after the long trek across Parnassos had armor this damaged. But she was beginning to see advantages as well. 

“So what are we here for?” FN-2304 asked.

“I need the chromium plates from the ship,” Phasma said.

“Any special reason?” RX-3081 asked. “You could always requisition fresh chromium from the Ilum project.”

“Personal reasons,” she said. Then she paused as she saw the beetle crawling on RX-3081’s damaged armor. She plucked it off, its shining golden carapace glinting in the sunlight like a gem, its little legs grabbing for anything to hold onto.

“What are they?” FN-2304 asked.

“Brendol called them ‘Parnassos beetles’,” Phasma said. She prodded its waving proboscis with one armored finger before dropping the insect to the sand and stepping on it. More beetles swarmed from the ground to lap at the beetle’s wet insides, leaving nothing but a dry carapace once they were done. “Brendol called them all ‘Parnassos beetles’.”

FN-2304 plucked a red one off of the sand. It glittered like a ruby, like blood red glass. “Each color is a different species?” he asked.

“And each with a different venom,” Phasma agreed. “We had white ones with three black spots in the Nautilus, they drank the water out of waste pits. They were the least dangerous.

“I never saw the black ones before the desert,” she admitted. “I’d heard about the yellow ones but never saw the effects until Carr died. But I’ve seen the red ones’ bite and its effects.”

FN-2304 examined the red beetle in his hand before pulling an ammo box off his belt, dumping the plasma cartridge and locking the beetle away. He held the little beast captive in his hand before clipping the ammo box back onto his belt. “They’re venomous.” The interest in his voice made the others nervous.

“How do they kill?” FR-2116 asked. “How does each type kill?”

“The silver beetles bite to suck blood,” Phasma described. “They’re not deadly. Their eggs are deadly. They lay eggs under the skin. If not dug out and the wound burned the eggs hatch and grow into grubs that eat entire limbs. I watched captives at Arratu Station unable to move with all four limbs eaten down to bare bone by grubs; the grubs were picked out and eaten while the captives begged for death.”

RX-3081 felt ill. Suddenly the destruction of Arratu Station seemed less spiteful.

“The yellow beetles bite to kill,” she continued. “If the bitten limb can be amputated before the illness appears the bitten might sometimes live. The illness falls after a day. By then it’s too late, the bitten grows weaker and weaker as their insides slowly dissolve. Eventually they bloat, unable to move without ripping their own skin. Their insides leak out as thick gooey water all over the sand.

“The black beetles bite to consume. They bite into their prey and burrow halfway in. An attached black beetle looks like a black lump in the skin. It grows as it sucks blood. It can grow to the size of a fist if allowed to sit. The entire ordeal is painless until the beetle is removed or drops off on its own, then the bite stings as it bleeds freely. The bleeding doesn’t stop until a hot knife is pressed against the bite to burn it closed.

“The red beetles bite to harvest. The bitten will begin to pass water uncontrollably. If alone, they won’t stop passing water and will die within hours having pissed themselves to death. If the bitten has friends they might survive, if those friends are close enough. Friends can help the bitten replace the water they lose. If enough water and salts can be gathered the bitten can pass the venom and recover.

“They’re all called ‘water beetles’,” she concluded. “Each type needs your water to survive and it will do anything it can to get it.”

“I’m sorry you asked,” RX-3081 said, glaring at FN-2304. 

“It’s good to know what we’re up against,” FR-2116 admitted. “Nobody get bit by anything, okay? Especially not the yellow ones.”

“Good advice,” RX-3081 muttered. He looked down at his foot and noticed the big black beetle sitting on his boot, its proboscis licking at his shoe as though trying to find a way in. He kicked and sent it flying.

They avoided the beetles as they pulled plates of chromium out of the ground like it was the most refined of ores, already pressed into sheets and ready for use. Nobody wanted to mention FN-2304 dropping all of his plasma cartridges to fill his ammo boxes with beetles, one of each color.

But Phasma watched and was pleased.

It would make the next step easier.


	3. Conspiracy at Cleo Station

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like I should apologize for this chapter. You'll see why...

Cleo Station was abandoned by the living.

Fertile fields stretched as far as the eye could see, grain grass cultivars growing tall and yellow in chaotic bunches. A closer look found those grains didn’t look quite right, the seeds were too small, the grass blades too thin. The plants had grown unmanaged and uncultivated for so long they’d reverted back to a wild type.

Birds flocked in the fields, their raucous calls the only animal sounds FN-2304 heard on this wretched planet.

Cleo Station was a nightmare wrapped in a dream.

FN-2304 knew of people who would kill to have land like this. He deduced from the way Phasma punched dents into a retaining wall that her clan had never known plenty like this. But it was uncultivated, untouched, allowed to revert back to wild nature. Nobody used this land.

Nobody was left alive to use it.

The Con Star personnel never made it out of Cleo Station alive. The final recording from Con Star Mining still played on an endless loop in the main room, announcing the layoffs over and over to an audience of corporate workers who had all dosed themselves with poison rather than live without orders. Their skeletons lay in the main room, the floor still stained where puddles of rot once seeped. Their cups of poison still lay clutched in skeletal hands, the remains of red crusted inside.

FN-2304 didn’t understand it. He’d been betrayed and abandoned in his life, losing everything he had and was twice already. Each time he got up, gathered his vengeance, vowed to do better, and continued on. It made no sense that of the hundred skeletons here in this main room, not a one once held the strength to get up and continue on.

The production floor whirred as the machines came to life. FN-2304 figured he should head down to see what the others were up to now.

Below on the production floor, Phasma fed plates of chromium into a synthicator. FR-2116 held one of the red-encrusted cups up to his helm, his HUD showing peaks in the UV-Vis spectra that identified it as food coloring standard mixture number 40. 

RX-3081 stood watching the big machine eating the plates of spaceship hull. Then he noticed Phasma getting undressed. “Why?” he asked.

She didn’t answer, not directly. Instead she placed each of her armor plates into the scanner for the synthicator to acquire. RX-3081 watched as piece by piece Phasma’s armor was scanned into the machine. She paused at the helm, her standard Imperial Stormtrooper helm in her hands. She didn’t place that in the scanner. Instead she turned to RX-3081. “Your helm,” she ordered.

“This whole trip to Parnassos was to make custom armor,” RX-3081 accused. Still he removed his helm and handed it to her. 

“It was,” she agreed. She tried it on then pulled it off, deciding then. She carefully peeled the sensors from the inside of RX-3081’s helm then placed the empty helm in the scanner. She preferred the design of the Hound helms. It was a different design from the Imperial Stormtroopers, sleek and smooth and without the large visible respirator. The profile was both softer and more menacing, more contained, with larger eyes and better sensors. It was a design Cardinal once used for the cadets until Brendol ordered him to return to the older Imperial style. Phasma wondered if Brendol's dislike was nothing more than emotional contrarianism.

“You’re risking radiation poisoning for armor,” FR-2116 said.

“We risked more than that for our armor,” FN-2304 admitted.

“Am I going to get that back?” RX-3081 asked. Phasma’s flat look was his answer, he was not.

As the synthicator worked, printing armor plates using the chromium as feed stock, Phasma sent RX-3081 into the main room for a set of four cups. She waited until he came back, four transparaglass cups in hand. Next, she ordered FN-2304 hand over his ammo boxes as she pulled on her white Stormtrooper gloves.

“Why?” FN-2304 asked, suspicions rising.

The synthicator hummed along as Phasma led them all into a corporate break room. A duraplast table and chairs sat in the middle, still sporting caf stains and a datapad long since run dry of battery. Empty vending machines still flashed ‘out of order’. An ice machine had long since run dry, the coolant circulating in empty pipes solely to keep the pumps cold. Ancient caf packets lay next to a sink and a filthy nanowave. She placed the four transparaglass cups on the table then sat down. “Your ammo boxes,” she said.

FN-2304 grumbled and tossed them onto the table. “Figured they might be useful,” he muttered.

“They will be,” she assured. Phasma carefully opened each ammo box, fishing out the beetle and then imprisoning it beneath an overturned cup. One red, one silver, one black-green, and one gold.

“Your Captain said I should trust you,” she said. “I don’t trust. But Armitage and I have an understanding. I understand what he wants and he understands what I want. At the moment our wants align. If all goes well here they may align for a long time.” She tapped the cup that held the golden beetle prisoner. “I need this one.”

FN-2304 considered Phasma and the gold beetle under the cup and what she’d said its bite would do. Her face gave nothing away but it didn’t have to. A slow smile spread across his face, hidden by the black helm. Still, the voice modulator did nothing to hide his glee. “Who are we assassinating?” he asked.

Finally Phasma showed an expression, one of uncertain shock. She glared at him, pulling the cup with the golden beetle closer to her as though protecting it from his grasping fingers. “You assume much,” she warned.

“Do we?” FR-2116 asked. “You said you’re counting on a recall reaction. ‘I was in the med bay with radiation poisoning again’ is a strong alibi.”

“You’re the first person Hux has ever sent us on a mission with,” RX-3081 mused. “Worse, this is the first mission where we’re not with the rest of our squad, it’s just the three of us. And you.”

“Hux punishing us with his teeth is normal but this is excessive,” FN-2304 said. “RX-3081 wasn’t even involved in acquiring the droid. But this isn’t really a punishment, is it. We just have the skills you need.”

“The droid was an excuse,” Phasma allowed. “He would have found one had you not provided it.”

“So we  **are** here on purpose,” FN-2304 crowed. He pulled a creaking and half-decayed duraplast chair and sat across from Phasma, arms on the table and helm level with the transparaglass prisons of the four deadly beetles.

“I’ve been studying field medicine,” FR-2116 said. “RX-3081 is Force-sensitive. FN-2304 has his strange obsession with deadly poisons.”

“Why are we really here?” RX-3081 asked.

Phasma looked at the three Hounds before her. “Your involvement is unnecessary,” she insisted. 

“Of course it's necessary,” FN-2304 countered. “How do you plan on getting a beetle past decon? You can’t just stash it in the  _ Fenris _ and expect it to still be there once decon finishes stripping the shuttle’s insides and setting them all on fire. What happens if your recall reaction starts early? Who’s going to land the shuttle? At the very least you need someone to carry the beetle for you, if medical finds it on you they’ll destroy it and that’s if nobody is accidentally bitten. I guarantee you if that happens the mission fails, I expect General Hux might get suspicious if someone dies of a distinctive venom from your homeworld that only he knows about.”

“You’ll need to be able to plant the beetle, retrieve it, and get rid of it with no one knowing, least of all your mark,” RX-3081 realized. “How skilled are you at stealth missions?”

“How skilled are  **you** at them?” Phasma countered.

“I’m a sniper,” RX-3081 snorted. “Stealth is necessary for my line of work.”

“Trust us, that’s why we’re here,” FR-2116 crooned.

“Who are we assassinating?” FN-2304 asked again, the quiet glee back in his voice.

Phasma considered. When Armitage sent the three Hounds with her she was sure she’d have to engineer their deaths regardless of Armitage’s promises of their silence. She still hadn’t dismissed that possibility. Even so, here they were, offering to help her. FN-2304 brought up good points she hadn’t considered. RX-3081 opened up potential avenues she couldn’t on her own. FR-2116 had skills she could use. She laid a hand on the red beetle’s transparaglass prison and slid it forward toward FN-2304.

The beetle reared up in a threatening posture, its forelegs waving as it opened its shell and rattled wings too small to actually produce lift. FN-2304 pulled his arms off the table even as he leaned in close to the red beetle, its venom only  **potentially** fatal.

“One of you will take its bite,” Phasma said. It was not a question.

“Aren’t they deadly?” RX-3081 realized. “Less deadly than the yellow ones, sure, but…”

“The First Order knows of only one species of beetle,” FN-2304 mused. “Burrows underground. Potentially fatal bite. General Hux never recorded the symptoms of its venom.”

“If we walk into a Star Destroyer medbay saying one of us was bitten by a Parnassos beetle the med team will add those symptoms to the First Order report,” FR-2116 mused. “General Hux will be the only one who knows any better and I doubt he’ll bother to check.”

“The First Order will assume General Hux didn’t want his name on a report that reads ‘causes the victim to piss themself to death’,” RX-3081 said with a snort. “So how do we avoid dying?”

“I can set up an IV in the  _ Fenris _ ,” FR-2116 offered. “That means I can’t take the bite. And I don’t recommend RX-3081, venoms can affect Force-users in strange ways.”

“That leaves me,” FN-2304 said with a resigned sigh. He preferred to  **watch** poisons do their work, not to experience it.

Phasma watched the Hounds deliberate, silently contemplating their words. They took her order amongst themselves, discussed how best to implement it, and then agreed on who would take the risk. There were no arguments, no great displays of self sacrifice, no cowardice. They approached it like any other problem and accepted the solution, all because it would benefit an assassination they didn’t even know the details of yet.

As chaotic as these Hounds sometimes seemed, she couldn’t fault their training or their loyalty. 

If all Stormtroopers were so well trained the First Order would be so much stronger.

“What exactly does the venom do?” FN-2304 asked, even as he pulled off his gauntlets and laid them in his lap.

“As I said before,” Phasma said. “You begin to pass water uncontrollably. If you can’t replace it fast enough you’ll die.”

“Any details?” FN-2304 reached for the red beetle’s glass prison with his bare hands. “Or do I have to find out myself?”

Phasma figured she could provide the details she knew, memories of deaths in her family before the Scyre. “You’ll first notice the pain in your back,” she allowed. “Then you’ll pass water. All of it. At first you’ll be able to stop yourself, though it will hurt to try. Soon even that dignity is gone. It can take days for your body to finish passing the venom.”

“How is it treated here?” FR-2116 asked.

“Your water will need to be replaced. And all your salts. Some grow desperate when bitten and begin to drink their own water but it never helps, they’re only drinking the venom they’ve already passed. That’s why you need friends. Because the only way you’ll survive is if they offer their own water for you to drink.”

FN-2304’s hands covered the glass prison. He didn’t lift it to release the beetle. “So I’m going to piss myself to death,” he said, his voice carefully neutral. “Unless I drink yours. I hate this planet.”

“I’m going to hook you up to an IV in the  _ Fenris _ as soon as we get back to the ship,” FR-2116 promised.

“We don’t want it to look as though we planned his access to your treatments,” Phasma said, the beginnings of a cruel enjoyment in her voice. “We want this to look like an accident.”

“Kriff,” FN-2304 swore. “We don’t want to risk Parnasson infection, either. The general wrote it was everywhere, caused by any wound. The IV uses a needle to get to my veins.”

“Did General Hux get anything right about this planet?” RX-3081 complained.

FN-2304 took a deep breath then pulled the glass away. He grabbed the beetle in one hand, holding it against the back of his other hand. The little creature wriggled its insectile legs, trying to crawl up his hand to get out of his grip. Finally it seemed to get the hint, stabbing with its proboscis. The momentary stab of pain morphed quickly to a tiny mote of fire, the burn of venom into his bloodstream.

Then he pulled it off and slammed the bug onto the table, squishing it with his bare hand.

“It’s done,” he said.

Phasma nodded. “Drink extra water before it begins,” she suggested. “It causes the symptoms to come on faster.” She stood up and left, returning to the production floor to inspect her new armor.

FN-2304 wiped his hand on the table before pulling his gauntlets back on. Then he leaned down to look closely at the yellow beetle that scrabbled at the glass trying to lick at the red beetle’s wet corpse just outside its prison. “So who are you meant for?” he asked.

The beetle didn’t answer.

*****

FN-2304 had known pain.

That was the only explanation Phasma could think of for his fortitude. Every other redback bite she’d ever witnessed caused the bitten to give in quickly. Most gave in soon after the pain began, letting go of their water to make the pain stop.

She sat on a duraplast crate wearing nothing but her underarmor as she filed down the sharp edges of a newly printed thigh guard. The armor sparked with each rasp of the file, the chromium much harder than the duraplast plating of the standard Stormtrooper armor that she once wore. After she rounded the edges of each piece she placed it in a pattern, the very same pattern it would have been pressed in if it were just a Stormtrooper’s armor. But this was more. This armor was stronger than Stormtrooper duraplast yet also more flexible, shiny chrome capable of withstanding reentry temperatures if necessary. It was challenging to file, she’d already worn the teeth off of three files. All three lay behind her where she’d tossed them like empty oyster shells.

The sparks lessened and she ran her bare fingertip over the dulled teeth of the file. Now four were worn down to uselessness. She tossed this one behind as well before reaching into the crate below her. She pulled out another file and got back to work, continuing to file down the sharp unmachined edges of the armor.

She’d been at this for over two hours now, taking her time to clean each piece of their sharp edges and the incidental surface flaws caused by the synthicator’s age and ill-repair. She was almost done.

She was sure FN-2304 would have given in by now. Any man she’d ever known on Parnassos always gave in within a few minutes of the pain’s onset. Women tended to last longer, up to half an hour. But this?

FN-2304 sat against a wall, curled into the corner between floor and wall. His arms wrapped around his middle, his breathing loud and ragged. His voice modulator sounded like a respirator, each breath shaking and echoing between loud sparking rasps of the file. FR-2116 sat just out of arm’s reach of his curled form, too far to take a punch but close enough to monitor the shaking Hound. RX-3081 sat on the floor nearby, neglected datapad in his lap as he stared unseeing at a silent commlink’s paused hologram.

“It hurts less as soon as you give in,” Phasma said. She’d said it when the pain began and again when the pain started to spike. But just like before, FN-2304 refused to give in. He chose to endure that pain instead, shuddering in his armor.

She finished the edge of her plate and laid it out next to the other finished pieces. She picked up another piece, a pauldron, and sat back down on her crate of files. When she began she wouldn’t have considered the possibility that she might finish before he gave in. Not even a Stormtrooper would last so long, certainly none of the coddled children Cardinal paraded in front of her as his ‘best’. But she was running out of armor to file and he hadn’t given in. Worse, she felt her own hands shaking and growing weak like they had in the Dead Lands the first time, the beginnings of the radiation sickness that she needed to bring back to the  _ Absolution. _

When she started she would have wagered food that he would have given in before her. Now she wasn’t so sure she’d win that bet.

*****

FN-2304 curled in on himself and shivered.

It would hurt less if he could somehow curl the other way but his spine didn’t bend backwards. All he could do was pull his legs to his chest and shiver at the searing pain on both sides of his spine. The pain made it hard to breathe, each breath a ragged gasp just on this side of a scream. 

It didn’t start out bad, a minor ache in his back that had him twisting and pressing against the wall to try to find relief. But over time the pain grew worse, growing from a dull cold ache to a hot brand then a sear and now it was like the stab of a lightsabre into his spine.

He wanted to punch FR-2116, he could taste the man’s concern from here. At least RX-3081 faced away from him as he worried far too loudly for comfort. He wasn’t sure if he appreciated the neutral almost-mocking tone that Phasma used as she told him, yet again, that giving in would make the pain stop.

He wasn’t even sure why he fought so hard to resist it. They all knew it was inevitable. The red beetle’s bite would have him pissing himself to death without FR-2116 fitting him with an IV and getting him back to a Star Destroyer. But still he refused. It was a point of pride that forced him to endure, pride he wasn’t even sure he controlled anymore. Pride for pride’s sake.

His teeth creaked as he gritted them and snorted, biting down on the scream that nearly forced its way past his thoughts. No, he wouldn’t scream. He wouldn’t give that bug’s red carcass the satisfaction.

*****

The file slipped against a plate, falling out of Phasma’s hands. She stared down at it as though it had betrayed her, jumping out of her grip like that. She shivered.

“It’s started,” FR-2116 realized, looking up from where he watched FN-2304. “Your recall reaction.”

Phasma growled, cursing her body’s own betrayal. Sensation crashed in on her, the clammy chill of sweat drying uncomfortably in her underarmor. Her short hair stuck to her forehead, curls turned dark with sweat and dust. Nausea roiled in her belly though there was nothing to bring up. Her skin itched where dust had crept in between the plates of her white armor, lodging in her underarmor.

This was supposed to be a mission she could undertake on her own. She’d planned on finishing this task and returning to the  _ Fenris _ ; they'd be well on their way to the  _ Absolution _ by the time the sickness began. Instead she watched two black helms and one bare face as they watched her right back. When Armitage sent them with her she’d considered them all liabilities, soldiers to keep at arm’s length. At no point did she consider them to be co-conspirators.

Then they found the holes in her plans and offered solutions. FN-2304 willingly held the redback to his skin and allowed it to bite. Even now he endured pain that she, apparently, could not as her own sickness sapped her strength and rendered her nauseous and weak.

“Now two of you are incapacitated,” RX-3081 said. “We have what we came for, we should leave.”

“No,” Phasma snapped, shocked by her own protest. But she had to admit its wisdom. “The shuttle may record what we say next. It must be done here.”

FN-2304 groaned, the fine razor edge of a scream barely stopped by his own will as he shuddered through the pain. “You couldn’t... say it earlier…”

“Your Captain told me to trust you,” Phasma said. “I don’t trust. But I am no longer capable of finishing the assassination alone. I need you involved.”

“If this isn't… PFASSKING… involved…” FN-2304 fell forward into his own curl as he shuddered through the pain. He managed to unfold his arms from around his belly, steadying himself on his shuddering hands. His fingers grasped at nothing, gauntlets creaking as they scraped the plasticrete floor.

“If we know who the yellow beetle is meant for, we can help you smuggle it,” FR-2116 offered. “You’re immediately going into decon when we get back, anything you’re carrying will be taken from you and sterilized. The  _ Fenris _ will be stripped and everything in it dealt with, burned or dumped into space. We’ll be lucky if we get the  _ Fenris _ back. Either RX-3081 or myself has to carry it, it’s the only way you’re getting it into the First Order now.”

“We’re returning to the  _ Absolution _ ,” Phasma admitted. “FN-2304 will be transferred to the medbay there. I need Brendol to be concerned for me, to expose himself to me. His own symptoms will be mistaken for radiation sickness brought on by his exposure to me.”

FN-2304 began to scream. That scream morphed into something like a moan as his tense form seemed to droop in physical relief. He gasped as the pain faded, his breathing finally slowing and deepening. FR-2116 wondered if he’d passed out but then FN-2304 lifted himself on his hands enough to look up at Phasma. He hadn’t passed out, he’d only given in to the beetle’s venom. Yet he didn’t seem to notice or care about the growing puddle of fluid under him as he realized what exactly Phasma had said. “We’re killing Brendol.” It wasn’t a question, he knew he was right. “We’re killing Brendol Hux.” He huffed, a weak attempt at a laugh. "That almost makes this worth it."  


“We’re killing… General Brendol Hux…” FR-2116’s disbelieving tone crept out through his helm despite his best efforts.

RX-3081 began to laugh.

Phasma allowed her gaze to linger on each Hound in turn. She considered her blaster. Normally she wouldn’t entertain the possibility of losing a 3 on 1 fight against mere Stormtroopers but now she wasn’t so sure. These weren’t just Stormtroopers and she was weakened.

“Hux trusts us enough to kill his dad,” RX-3081 crowed and Phasma again turned her thoughts from her weapon.

FN-2304 also managed to laugh, though his own laughter was much more subdued. Whether that was exhaustion due to pain or something else Phasma couldn’t be sure. “I can’t think of anyone more deserving than dear old Daddy,” he said.

“How, though?” FR-2116 asked. “Bugs aren’t endemic to Star Destroyers. Someone will have to plant it. If they get caught we’re all dead.”

“So we don’t get caught,” RX-3081 said. “We’ve been Stormtroopers before. I’ll need new armor while I’m there anyway, I can get done up in white. Nobody will question a Stormtrooper on the  _ Absolution _ .”

“How are you planting it?” FR-2116 demanded. “The  _ Absolution _ uses coded maglocks on all their doors! We don’t have clearance.”

FN-2304 snorted. “When has a locked door ever stopped him?”

Phasma watched this all in silence as these Hounds planned out Brendol’s assassination for her. She’d hoped to flick it into his greatcoat at some future opportunity and allow nature to take its course. It would have been risky but Brendol was never an observant man. She knew he had a wife but Phasma considered the possibility of Maratelle’s death an acceptable risk. Instead these Hounds planned how to get the beetle past decon, how to get it into RX-3081’s hands, how to get him to Brendol without being noticed, how to dispose of the evidence, and even how to give the illness time to grow dire before he thought to seek help.

Phasma still didn’t trust. But she was coming to understand why Armitage trusted and why he trusted them.


	4. The Absolution

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sections of this chapter constitute a [Bad Things Happen Bingo](https://nebulousmistress.tumblr.com/post/616692789320810496/here-is-your-card-for-bad-things-happen-bingo) prompt fill for Attacked in Their Sleep.

The  _ Fenris _ dropped out of hyperspace right where the computer told it to. Unfortunately the computer was the only one fit to fly the ship.

RX-3081 sat in the pilot’s seat, hands unwilling to touch the controls. He had no real experience flying anything. He’d passed the required Stormtrooper lessons on piloting vessels but those were just topical courses, they were never meant to be used in the field. They gave him enough of an understanding of the controls to avoid blowing himself up or crashing into an asteroid but he’d never qualled with anything.

FN-2304 was in the medbay suffering barbaric field treatments involving needles and rubber tubes feeding IV fluid directly into his veins. Phasma wasn’t much better off, curled on a bunk shivering as she vehemently refused attempts to remove her chrome armor. FR-2116 flitted between the two of them, doing what he could to treat one patient who refused treatment and another who could only wait out his symptoms.

That left RX-3081 alone to fly the shuttle.

The comm system pinged, a warning that he wasn’t alone.

“Imperial shuttle, identify yourself.”

RX-3081 glanced out the viewport but he didn’t see anything. At least, not physically. He could tell there was something off in the distance, a presence that felt like anticipation. If he looked closely he might see stars wink out and then reappear as the vast black  _ Resurgent _ -class Star Destroyer blocked out the stars behind it without reflecting light itself.

RX-3081 hit the comm button, opening a channel. “ _ Absolution _ , this is the Lambda shuttle  _ Fenris _ on personal business for Captain Phasma,” he said, his voice deceptively calm. “Request permission to come aboard.”

There was a long pause before the  _ Absolution _ answered. “ _ Fenris _ , we have no record of your flight plan. What is your mission?”

“Personal business on Parnassos,” RX-3081 said. “We have injuries aboard and require medical assistance.”

There was another pause. RX-3081 understood this one clearly. There were stories about the first few ships that took in humanitarian cases only to fall to the Mnggal-Mnggal. The First Order lost three Star Destroyers before the infection was understood and those ships destroyed in a terrible sacrifice.

“What is your designation?”

“RX-3081, Hound squad, previously of the Second Expeditionary Sniper squad, previously of the RX cadre. Temporarily assigned to Captain Phasma as punishment for a… droid incident.”

There was another pause as the communications officer on the  _ Absolution _ verified everything he’d said. Then came the next question. “What is the nature of your injured?”

“Captain Phasma suffers from radiation poisoning. FN-2304 was bitten by some sort of insect and is undergoing treatment. FR-2116 is currently treating both.”

“Are you a qualled pilot?”

Here RX-3081 had to grin. “I am not,” he admitted, unable to keep himself from sounding a little smug. “I’ve never landed one of these things before.”

“Hold position until the landing deck can be cleared, you will be informed when we’re ready for you.”

“Affirmative.” RX-3081 let the comm fall silent. Until then he flew sublight, feeling the ship respond below him. He could get used to this if he had to. It was just like sniping, like putting the shot where it needed to go. Except the shuttle was much bigger than a blaster bolt.

A bright flash of light betrayed where the  _ Absolution _ hung black against the darkness of space. The belly opened into a bright ring where the forcefield kept atmosphere in. Then bright white as half a wing of TIE fighters shot out in twin lines; easier to clear the deck by launching than by putting everything away.

“ _ Fenris _ you are cleared for landing. Do you require verbal assistance?”

“Negative, I can handle it.” RX-3081 turned and flew toward the open hangar. He strapped his harness closed just in case. He pulled the wings up early, figuring it was better to pull them early than late. He dropped the landing gear, overshot the landing zone by a hundred meters, and skidded upon touchdown. Landing struts squealed against the formerly pristine tarmac, tossing sparks. Then it was over.

FR-2116 stuck his head through the cockpit hatch. “The kriff kind of landing was that?” he demanded.

“My first!” RX-3081 popped the harness, tossing the straps over his shoulders. “Hey, we didn’t crash.”

“For some definitions of.”

RX-3081 rolled his eyes and lowered the ramp.

Step one, return to the  _ Absolution _ . Complete.

*****

General Brendol Hux didn’t normally run and yet here he was, running through the corridors of his own ship. He’d been in his quarters when one of the Majors Raan informed him his son’s shuttle was requesting an emergency landing. He’d debated sending the whole pack of them back to Ilum where they belonged, it couldn’t be much of an emergency if they were out here, but then he heard Phasma was on board.

That got him interested. Brendol worked hard to bring Phasma off that backwater planet of hers. Though, truth be told, mostly he worked hard to get himself off that backwater planet and Phasma had simply been useful. In return he expected her undying loyalty, secure in the knowledge that if she didn’t submit to his command then he could always dump her back there.

So why was she colluding with Armitage? What could Armitage provide her that Brendol couldn’t? He didn’t understand it. Unless she was looking for an entirely different type of conquest, in which case all she had to do was ask. Brendol imagined she’d be refreshingly wild in bed, clawing and screaming and...

Brendol made it to the lift then shut the lift doors on the troopers following him. He was alone as the lift descended down to the hangar bay. He leaned down to catch his breath, hands braced on his knees, before reaching down to adjust himself. Now was not the time to imagine Phasma making  **that** request of him. Maybe later when he was alone.

The lift opened onto a hangar in the middle of emergency management. The  _ Fenris _ was turned almost 200 degrees off of its expected landing vector, the nose facing out toward space. Gouges scraped into his smooth tarmac betrayed the skid and twist of the shuttle’s unskilled landing. It wasn’t a crash persay, the shuttle was upright and undamaged, but it was barely the work of a novice. He’d trained Phasma better than this, what happened?

The shuttle hatch lowered, its ramp extending to the tarmac, and a figure stepped into view. He wore no helm, his black armor scuffed beyond all logic. His hair was nonregulation length, his eyes oddly piercing, his footsteps eerily quiet against the ringing metal of the shuttle’s ramp.

This was one of Armitage’s vaunted Hounds? Force, it looked almost as unkempt now as it had after the Praxis mission. Brendol wondered if the Hounds made it a point to muss themselves in the field or if their disarray was simply a failure of Armitage's training methods.

Pounding footsteps behind Brendol announced the arrival of Cardinal and his honor guard. Brendol glanced back to see a field of white led by a single figure in red, captain’s cape fluttering behind. The red stood out in any number of Stormtroopers, Cardinal’s armor identifying him no matter where or how he tried to hide. Not that he did try, Cardinal knew his place was out in the open as a warning to all loyal Stormtroopers. Associating oneself with Armitage, willingly or not, would taint them. It turned them into something else, something less than perfect. Something that would always stand out as an imperfection.

Bright red in a field of white, like blood spattered across Ilum’s snow, before Armitage tainted that too.

Brendol turned back to the  _ Fenris _ but the figure in black was gone, retreated back into the ship’s hold. Probably to get his helmet.

Another figure in black descended, pushing a field stretcher. The man on that stretcher did not look well, pale and clammy and riddled with tubes attached to his limbs. Bags of water hung from stands attached to the field stretcher, dangling above and below him. The Hound pushing the stretcher stopped at the base of the ramp.

“General, sir,” FR-2116 called, saluting.

“Give me a report, trooper,” Brendol demanded.

“FN-2304 was bitten by a beetle native to Parnassos,” FR-2116 said. “I’ve kept him stable for the time being but he needs access to a full medbay.”

Brendol winced as he heard about the Parnassos beetle. The trooper didn’t look translucent and bloated yet but he knew it was only a matter of time. He wasn’t sure there was a way to save the trooper but at least the scientists could study the beetle’s venom. It might behoove them to cut their patrol short by a few days to hand whatever corpse remained to Armitage’s little mad scientists. Dr. Katsuo would enjoy experimenting on something too dead to resist her dubious charms. He nodded, allowing FR-2116 to push his injured comrade to the lift and the medbay.

Footsteps on the ramp betrayed another. Another two.

Brendol looked up and wasn’t entirely sure what he saw.

The trooper in scuffed black armor was dwarfed by the giant who leaned on him. Her armor shone like the purest quicksilver, mirrored to a perfect finish. Metal plates slid effortlessly across each other as she moved, never leaving a scratch at the joints. Her helm was nearly featureless, smooth and perfect and her black eyes shone the faint green of internal nightvision. Even her weapons matched, mirrored chrome that hung heavy in their holsters.

She was beautiful.

This. This here was the type of monster he’d wanted Cardinal to be. Beautiful and deadly and unquestionably his. Her armor marked her as different, but a softer different. Not blood staining the snow, she shone like a single kyber crystal sparkling in a field of worthless white quartz. 

Brendol couldn’t help the grin that crossed his features. “Captain Phasma,” he purred. “So this was your ‘mission of personal importance’.”

Phasma waved RX-3081 away. Brendol ignored the look of concern on the trooper’s exposed face, instead focusing on the shining giant before him. Phasma stood tall and straight, arms at her sides extended in invitation. An invitation to look, to touch, to admire.

Brendol admired. He stepped close, one hand extended to stroke her shining armor. The chrome was polished smooth, unmarred by wear. It was gently warmed by the body beneath it, or he’d prefer to believe that was why the armor felt slightly warm to the touch. He circled around her, admiring her from all angles as he trailed his hand over her armor.

“Do you approve?” she asked. Her voice modulator was different now, softer yet somehow so much more deadly. Audibly feminine, sultry and smooth.

“You’re beautiful,” Brendol murmured. “How did you find this on Parnassos?”

“It’s the hull of your own ship.”

Armor crafted from the skin of the  _ Alpha Imperialis _ . Losing that ship had been one of his greater failures, the only good thing to come from that mission was Phasma herself. And now she’d taken that failure and reclaimed it, made it into a triumph. To remind him of that triumph every time he saw her for the rest of her life.

Brendol slid behind her, curling his hands around her pauldrons. She didn’t shake him off, she knew better than to try. “I approve wholeheartedly,” he whispered.

Phasma didn’t follow him with her eyes. Instead she wavered on her feet. Brendol stepped back as RX-3081 darted in for her to collapse onto. He held her on her feet, allowing her to lean on him and keep her dignity. “She needs the medbay,” RX-3081 warned. “We spent too much time in the Parnasson Dead Lands.”

“Of course,” Brendol said absently. “Go.”

Phasma leaned on RX-3081 the whole way to the lift, somehow managing to make her physical weakness look like the epitome of personal strength. Brendol watched her leave, her shining armor a bright counterpoint to the scuffed black monstrosity that the trooper wore.

“Cardinal,” Brendol snapped.

“Sir.”

“Make sure those Hounds are fitted with proper armor. I’ll not have degenerates like that wandering my ship like they just rolled around in a sandstorm.”

“Yes sir.”

Brendol stood at the base of the ramp as his own troopers entered to inspect the state of the ship. They soon retreated with warnings of radiation as dosimeters were distributed to the decommission team. 

Brendol smirked as the decommission team descended on the shuttle in full radiation gear. This made two Lambda shuttles that Armitage had lost him. There wasn’t going to be a third.

*****

RX-3081 considered his new armor in the mirror. Bright white, bulbous respirator on his helm, it was perfect. Too perfect. He already hated it. He couldn’t see as well out of the generic HUD, it was nothing like the personalized display that Phasma stole from his armor.

No matter. Soon he’d be back on the  _ Locutor _ and able to get fitted for a proper suit of black.

It struck him that he’d worn white armor for well over a decade and yet one year in black armor changed him. Or maybe it wasn’t the armor. He raised a white-gloved hand to caress the black padding at his throat. The scars had faded but he still remembered blunted teeth at his throat, gaps where the fangs had been pulled, unable to tear but all too willing to crush…

And now he couldn’t imagine betraying the pfassking monster.

Maybe that was when everything changed for him, he just hadn’t known it yet. 

RX-3081 didn’t recognize the Stormtrooper in the mirror anymore. 

He squared his shoulders and felt his resolve set. He didn’t have to recognize the Stormtrooper in the mirror anymore. He wasn’t that Stormtrooper anymore. As soon as this mission was over he’d never have to be that Stormtrooper ever again.

He left the armory, his perfect new armor making him look like everyone else. Teenagers in their own half-outgrown suits of armor congregated in creche groups eager to prove themselves in the cadre. Batches moved with purpose through the ship, all set on their training goals for that day. Cadre cadets separated themselves from the children, trying to feel grown-up as they discussed their weapons training and Individual Duties.

RX-3081 felt their gazes washing over him, noting him and then dismissing him. He must have transferred in from one of the other ships, that was why they’d never seen him before. That explained why he didn’t quite move like the rest of them. Why he felt different. Then their thoughts wandered back to the matter at hand.

RX-3081 could hear them. The thought made his heart pound as he fought to keep his breathing steady. He’d always been good at reading Stormtrooper body language, was that just another manifestation of the Force as well? And was this an extension of that then? He resolved to talk to Dr. Otero when they got back to Ilum, he needed to know just how far the Force tended to take these things. 

He made his way to the main medbay. FN-2304 lay on a med table, still poked full of tubes. The collection of med droids around him all cooed and chittered in their metallic voices.

And FR-2116 was still there, still in his black armor.

RX-3081 sauntered up beside FR-2116, draping an arm over the other man’s shoulders. FR-2116 relaxed when he realized who it was, letting loose a deep sigh.

“How is he?” RX-3081 asked.

“He suffered some kidney damage,” FR-2116 allowed. “He still hasn’t cleared all of the venom out of his system. The med droids are keeping his salts and fluids stable.”

“Any chance of synthesizing an antidote?”

“Maybe. I bet Dr. Katsuo could do it. But the droids say he’ll clear the venom from his system before any antivenom could be synthesized. They’ve chosen not to waste the resources.”

RX-3081 nodded as FR-2116 unclipped an ammo case from his belt. It was too light to contain a plasma cartridge and yet it rattled when shaken. He didn’t shake it, instead silently pressing it into RX-3081’s palm.

RX-3081 took the ammo case and clipped it to his own belt. “You should get some rest,” he said. “Especially before decon hears about you.”

“Decon?” One of the med droids popped its metallic head up in interest. “State the nature of the required decontamination.”

“I hate you,” FR-2116 muttered.

RX-3081 stepped back and out of the medbay as the droid descended on their new victim. He had what he came for.

He had the beetle.

*****

Cardinal stood at attention surrounded by opulence. Black cases held medals that didn’t even exist anymore, implying great deeds that would see their recipient executed as a war criminal. Curios from across the civilized galaxy stood on shelves and low tables, from planets he’d never even heard of. The liquor cabinet stood open, one decanter of port and a single cut crystal tumbler taken from their usual places to sit upon the desk.

Brendol picked up that crystal tumbler, taking an unappreciatively large swig of the blood red liquid within. He was preoccupied by the report on the datapad he held in one hand. “So it appears the lucky cur is going to live,” he mused. “Modern medicine truly is a wonder.”

“Sir?” Cardinal asked.

“FN-2304,” Brendol explained. At Cardinal’s lack of answer Brendol elaborated. “You remember him, he worked for me for a few years before his lack of ambition rendered him unsuitable. A real pity, he could be ruthless when given cause. Maybe Armitage has managed to instill some zeal into the old dog. If that’s the case, perhaps a transfer is in order. I could use his ruthlessness now that I have reason.”

“Would that work?” Cardinal asked.

“I don’t see why not,” Brendol mused. “I’ll give him his name back. Opan, I believe it was. Tritt Opan. Yes, a Lieutenant’s bars would take him far.”

“I mean, sir, would it be wise to take one of Armitage’s Hounds? Would FN-2304 still follow orders in a way you… expected…”

Brendol watched as Cardinal shifted uncomfortably and could imagine him blushing as red as his armor. He put his datapad down, leaning forward across his own desk. “I tamed you, Cardinal,” he warned. “If you question my ability to reverse my son’s feral programming again I might have to question your own to resist it.”

Cardinal’s armor rattled as he shivered. Brendol smirked and leaned back, picking up his tumbler of port. Others may command through fear or terror but Brendol had long found ‘shame’ to be quite adequate.

“We’ll divert back to Ilum,” Brendol ordered. “No reason to rush. FN-2304 will be checked out by Dr. Katsuo, given the all clear, then we’ll accept the transfer of Lieutenant Opan to the  _ Absolution _ . I could use a dedicated Second again. Oh, I know you’re unparalleled but I want you in charge of the children. There’s no one I trust more with them.”

“Yes sir.”

Brendol smirked as he finished his glass of port. “I think he’ll be good for you, Cardinal. Someone who understands what Armitage put you through. There are so few left who can.”

Cardinal continued fidgeting in his armor. But Brendol didn’t pay any attention. Cardinal would come to remember that Brendol knew what was best for him. After all, that was why he had that red armor despite the failings of his previous training. He’d submit. He always did.

*****

Nobody questioned a Stormtrooper.

Nobody questioned a Stormtrooper on the  _ Absolution _ . A Stormtrooper could move with impunity and anonymity, white armor against a sea of white armor. Nodded helms greeted nodded helms, signs of mutual respect the only gates keeping a Stormtrooper from moving as he pleased through the gigantic Star Destroyer.

RX-3081 was just a Stormtrooper. His white armor made sure of that. Perhaps he even projected it in the Force, he didn’t know. There was nothing nefarious going on, he was simply a Stormtrooper on patrol through the command deck of the  _ Absolution _ . He passed by the lifts that led down to the secondary bridge staffed by a pair of bored cadets led by one of the Majors Raan. He passed the lifts that led to the primary bridge staffed by the full bridge crew led by the other Major Raan. He passed by corridors guarded by cadets still in their cadres, their Individual Duties spent on guard duty to keep them out of the way. He passed by closed and locked doors, the personal apartments of officers.

RX-3081 turned down one last corridor to find what he was searching for, twin command suites. One suite on each side. One for the husband, one for the wife. Both doors were unmarked, no way to tell one from the other, but this didn’t matter. He could feel which door was the correct one.

The doors were all locked with code cylinders and he had no such key. But this didn’t matter either. RX-3081 glanced back to make sure nobody was coming down this corridor before stepping up to one door. He laid his hand over the code reader as though pressing a cylinder to it; he wanted surveillance to show a legitimate entry.

Then he focused on the lock.

Imperial locks were predictable. They all relied on one of six fractals, only six patterns differentiating any lock from any other. The entire Imperial system reduced to six lock types. The First Order was no better, the smaller security systems lifted directly from Imperial design to save time. This one felt like the Barnsley fractal. RX-3081 closed his eyes and followed the fractal down, down past its infinite leaves to the point where the lock gave in and opened.

The door slid open.

RX-3081 heard faint snoring from within. His HUD informed him the lights were off. A droid sat deactivated in the corner. He stepped inside and let the door fall closed.

First, the droid. It was a K4 security droid. This was a potential problem. If the droid activated then RX-3081 would have no chance.

RX-3081 didn’t know a great deal about droids. He knew the basics: how to kill them, where to place blaster shots, how to command them, what they were used for. He knew they were machines just like a code lock or a flight computer or...

Wait...

They were machines… just like a code lock… 

RX-3081 stepped back, turned off the sound input in his helm, took a deep breath, and focused.

It wasn’t quite like a code lock. A code lock contained one single fractal, one program spiraling down into itself. The droid contained a multitude of fractals all curled in on each other, ferns and dragons and twists and turns and sequences and sets and…

And at the base of it one single point.

RX-3081 pressed on that point. His helm blocked the sound as the droid lit up for one terrible moment and then went dark. By the time he reactivated the sound input in his helm the droid was silent.

Snoring continued from the other room.

RX-3081 sighed in relief. He moved quietly in his armor, years of practice keeping him silent as he glanced into the bedroom.

Brendol Hux slept alone, sprawled out over the bed like it was his right to take up as much space as humanly possible. He slept with the blankets kicked halfway off the bed, his night clothes stained with sweat as he overheated in his sleep. 

RX-3081 pulled the ammo box from his belt. He opened it, reaching in to pull the angry, hissing, squirming, golden beetle. Its legs waved as it tried to grab ahold of anything, its proboscis seeking any nourishment it could find. 

RX-3081 allowed the beetle’s rear legs to grasp his fingers, giving the insect something to hold onto. Its proboscis still blindly sought water, tapping against the white armor of RX-3081’s gloves. 

Brendol snored.

RX-3081 slowly, quietly, gently held the beetle out next to Brendol’s sleeping form.

The bug didn’t take the hint, still tapping at RX-3081’s gloves.

RX-3081 then brushed the beetle against sleeping skin.  **That** convinced it, the beetle trying to pull itself out of RX-3081’s grasp to get at warm succulent flesh. Its proboscis waved in tiny insectile anticipation as RX-3081 held it close again.

It licked at beads of sweat before biting, before stabbing its proboscis in to access the sweet blood beneath.

Brendol huffed and swatted in his sleep before rolling away from the insect’s bite.

The beetle hissed at the loss of its meal. RX-3081 clamped both hands over the bug to muffle the noise. A moment of dread made him realize the snoring had stopped. He turned that dread inward, releasing a single long feeling of exhaustion and comfort and safety and something he could only describe as ‘sleep’. Sleep in its purest form.

The insect stopped moving. The snoring returned, deeper and slower than before.

RX-3081 retreated from the room, letting the door close behind him. He wasn’t sure if he locked it as he left; he wasn’t sure if anyone would notice if he hadn’t.

It was done.

General Brendol Hux was dead. He just didn’t know it yet.


	5. The Mad Scientist

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the end of Brendol's road. He canonically dissolves in a bacta tank. How could I not take that and gleefully elaborate?
> 
> Medical warning  
> Gore warning (but not a blood warning)  
> General Helluva warning

The _Absolution_ dropped out of hyperspace on the edge of the Asar system.

Tugs swarmed the comet cloud at the far edge of the star’s influence, picking choice comets and dragging them in to be processed at a mobile mining platform orbiting on the outer edge of the system.

The inner planet was a fractured mess, reduced to a belt of asteroids and rubble by mass drivers and mechanical disassembly. Tugs dragged chunks of the former planet to processing platforms and the skeletons of shipyards in construction between Asar and Ilum. The bones of _Resurgent_ -class Star Destroyers lay bare as droids and suited technicians swarmed the future battleships. Ilum itself circled dusky white and streaked gray, the dust of comet impacts slowly falling out of its violated atmosphere to show metal plating holding the mining trench open while the main crater still yawned wide and raw and glowing dull red.

In the middle of it all Asar burned white and hot, oblivious to the slow dismantling of its system.

The _Locutor_ hovered near a collection of shipyards all being linked together for easy transport, all with the seeds of a Star Destroyer under construction.

The _Absolution_ pulled alongside the smaller Imperial Star Destroyer, the great black ship casting the _Locutor_ in shadow. Both hangars opened, bright spots in the shadow, and a single shuttle flew from one ship to the other.

*****

Dr. Katsuo prepared her lab. Droids set up the operating tables, preparing both of them for the potentiality of major surgical interventions. Holograms lit up around the walls, giving her details sent to her from the med droids aboard the _Absolution_. She pulled her gloves up to her shoulders then shrugged her lab coat on. She pulled off her goggles, the droid eyes unlatching from the ports around her eyes. She pulled the lenses out and replaced them with a different set before putting them back on. Those droid eyes slotted into their ports and lit up, giving her access to a full range of magnifications and near-IR wavelengths.

She knew one of her patients but not the other.

Brendol was suffering a suspected radiation reaction, because of course he was. The man’s recent brush with radiation sickness left his system overly fragile and prone to chronic recall reactions. He might be so damaged that he’d never have a normal life and that would be terrible, so terrible that she’d get to study it all. But that wasn’t what interested her at the moment.

Her second patient was some Stormtrooper assigned to Captain Armitage Hux. He’d been bitten by a native insect on a barely-catalogued planet and now she’d get to study the effects. Maybe even synthesize an antidote, or at least isolate the active proteins in the venom. Oh, this would be so much fun!

“This is a serious situation, Dr. Katsuo,” a voice warned.

Dr. Katsuo scowled as she turned to face her intruder. General Pryde stepped onto the observation floor of her lab. Two Stormtroopers followed him, the door sliding shut behind. The Stormtroopers stood at full attention while Pryde held his hands behind his back and projected an air of disdainful superiority.

Dr. Katsuo ignored his self-important smirk, instead fixing him with a sweet smile. “Will you be able to stomach staying this time, General?”

The Stormtroopers shifted in their armor but didn’t say a thing.

“Somebody has to keep an eye on this charade of yours,” Pryde said, his voice carefully kept just on the edge of control. “You’re not a doctor. You shouldn't even be here. If it were my call you wouldn’t be in charge of this case. I'd send you back to where you came from if I could."

“If you could?” She smiled, showing more teeth than was proper. A low hiss rumbled under her breath. “If it were your call? Whose is it then? Did General Hux anger someone? Is it punishment that lands him in my lab? Or simply the realization that the First Order lacks real medics and your precious medical droids are only as skilled as the programmers of a hundred years ago?”

Pryde’s expression twitched, showing a moment of indignant fury, then it smoothed back out to quiet neutrality.

“You’d better stay healthy then,” she warned. “If I’m the best you can find.”

Pryde was about to answer but then the doors on the floor of the lab opened. Stormtroopers pushed two stretchers in, two men in varying shades of clammy and pale. Dr. Katsuo immediately got to work, commanding her droids to have both men placed on their own tables as she began preliminary examinations.

First she examined Brendol Hux. The man suffered from a full body edema, his skin stretched thin and taut over his swollen limbs. The belly was less visibly distended, possibly because there was enough of it that a little extra fluid didn’t make it much bigger. Sweat beaded on his tight pink skin, a flush beneath turning it red as she measured his temperature. The low grade fever was about what she expected. She stood over him, putting her face directly in his field of view, and called out to him. “Brendol, can you hear me?”

Brendol’s swollen eyes dragged themselves open, the pinpoint pupils darting around the room before landing on her face. Then his eyes fell closed again. “Again?” he lamented. “Why? What did I do this time?”

“You can hear me!” she crowed before pulling on a black respirator mask and strapping the air tank to her back. She flipped a switch on the respirator, activating the voice modulator so she wouldn’t sound muffled. “I need to know, when and how did all this start?”

“Few days ago…” Brendol muttered. “Started as flu-like. Tired. Then sore. Thought it was something… picked up by the troopers… on some planet…”

“Are all of your vaccinations up to date?”

“Think… so…”

One of the medical droids spoke up in its mechanical voice. “Records indicate Brendol Hux is allergic to the Corellian Meningitis vaccine. He has a valid exemption. All other required vaccinations are up to date.”

“This isn’t Corellian Meningitis,” she mused. “Symptoms are all wrong. We can disregard that. Brendol, tell me what you did the days before you got sick.”

“Nothing… strange…”

“We were on Parnassos.”

Dr. Katsuo turned to the Stormtrooper on her table, designation FN-2304. He propped himself up on his elbows, little IV bags beeping as their tubes twisted at his movement. “I and some others,” FN-2304 said, each word sounding like it took effort to say. “And Captain Phasma. Our ship was irradiated. General Hux met us on the flight deck when we got back.”

“Well now,” Dr. Katsuo crowed, directing her glee at Brendol. “That’s certainly something. What did I tell you about radiation?”

“Didn’t expose myself… not too much…”

“Oh, ‘not too much’ then, hmm?” Dr. Katsuo turned to FN-2304. “How much of a dose did you soak?”

“Sixty rads,” FN-2304 admitted. “Not enough to feel it. But it put Phasma right back in the medbay.”

“How long were you on the surface?” she asked. “Tell me you deconned once you got on a ship.”

“Dust blown into the ship,” FN-2304 gasped, starting to grow tired as he forced the words out. “Not safe to strip down. Had to keep our armor on. For our own safety. Deconned once we got out.”

“So when Brendol met you on the flight deck you hadn’t gone through decon yet.”

“No,” FN-2304 agreed.

“So did you decon afterwards?” Dr. Katsuo turned her gaze to Brendol. Even with his swollen cheeks she could see the scowl of being found out. “I’ll take that as a no.”

If he was having a recall reaction that would explain the fever. It would explain the edema. It would even explain the systemic shock her holograms showed as her droids took scans of her patients one at a time. She poked his arm, gauging just how dangerous the swelling was by touch. His skin was tight, the swelling underneath much firmer than his normal soft and fat form would imply.

“Undress him for a full examination,” she commanded her droids. As they complied she turned to her Stormtrooper patient. “You, on the other hand, you were bitten by a bug. It’s messing with your internal fluid balance.” She looked at his body. The Stormtrooper was already fully undressed, a single sheet covering his modesty and the catheter that led down to a constantly filling bag. His hands and forearms were dotted with needle marks where IV lines had run into his veins before those veins collapsed. Now the IV lines threaded through his elbows with other lines stabbed into the sides of his feet. She could simply test the clear liquid coming out through that catheter, and she would later, but first she wanted an unfiltered sample. “I’m going to draw some blood for testing.” She pulled a tourniquet and needle from a tray that a droid cheerfully held out to her. When she turned back to FN-2304 her voice had the same cheerful quality as the droid. “Hold still.”

Shifting movement on the observation floor betrayed General Pryde’s discomfort. Dr. Katsuo smirked under her respirator. These Imperial generals could talk whatever game they wanted, but when it came to fresh blood and the torment of proper medicine they all grew weak stomachs. She wondered if General Pryde would stand there long enough to witness her slicing open Brendol’s arms to relieve the internal pressure or if he'd even make it that far.

*****

Captain Armitage Hux stood before the lab door, TK-1959 and JN-1301 right behind him. He was nervous. He had an idea of what lay behind this door, a lifetime of deeds all falling into place around a man who most definitely deserved it. But there were still so many things that might go wrong. Dr. Katsuo was an excellent researcher, talented in the biochemical arts. His own genetic augments were a testament to her power and skill.

What if she figured it out?

No. That was why FN-2304 lay behind this door as well. His Hound was both smokescreen and excuse, his reason for being here. Too many Imperials knew just how he felt about his father to believe he was here on that man’s behalf.

Armitage took a deep breath before tapping the door open.

General Pryde looked back as the door opened and Armitage saw just how pale the older man looked. Pryde gestured for Armitage to come in quickly before he himself bolted out through the open door. The faint sound of retching drifted from the corridor as the door slid shut.

Armitage glanced at the Stormtroopers on guard duty but they both shrugged. They didn’t understand it either.

Then Armitage turned to the lab and began to see why. Pryde always did have a weak stomach.

FN-2304 lay on an operating table, pretending to sleep under a blanket as IVs continuously fed fluids into his veins. The catheter bag under his table still filled though much slower than it had when the beetle first bit him. Holographic displays near him traced fluid rates both in and out, showing he was recovering on his own.

Dr. Katsuo, on the other hand, was busy. Both droids assisted her as she hovered over a naked Brendol. He was intubated, a machine next to the table pumping air in and out past his swollen throat. Brendol’s forearms were both split open lengthwise, from the elbow to the wrist. His biceps were bruised with internal swelling but the skin wasn’t cut open yet. His thighs were likewise discoloured and swollen and Dr. Katsuo stood at the foot of his table with her hands around one calf. She palpated the skin before picking up a scalpel from a droid’s offered tray and drawing it along Brendol’s skin. 

The skin of his calf split open, peeling back as the red flesh inside popped out of its confines.

Pryde’s reaction made some sense. “Dr. Katsuo,” Armitage said.

Dr. Katsuo looked up. The droid eyes and the respirator covered any expression she might have shown. “Captain Hux, welcome! Did General Pryde need to switch out?”

“I’m sure he appreciated not having to watch,” Armitage allowed. He could smell the stench of interstitial fluid but very little spilled blood. Brendol looked terrible, like a balloon slowly rupturing as his flesh spilled out through the cuts carefully carved in his skin. Brendol's eyelids fluttered and Armitage shivered. “He’s awake?”

“I have him on a nerve block,” she said dismissively. “He can’t feel anything below his neck. Isn’t that right, Brendol?”

Brendol opened one eye to look at her before it fell closed.

“He’ll be fine,” Dr. Katsuo assured. “As soon as I know the maximum potential extent of the swelling I’ll have him in a bacta tank. We can remove any excess skin later once he’s back on his feet.”

“What caused it?” Armitage asked.

“My working theory is it’s a recall reaction,” she explained. “Your idiot father got himself irradiated again. He could have avoided this by following some basic safety protocols and submitting himself to decon once he knew he’d been exposed to a large dose. Instead he got himself like this.”

“Does radiation cause this?”

“It can,” she allowed. “We’re looking at potentially the beginnings of chronic radiation syndrome. His body may have been so damaged by the initial exposure that he might never fully recover. He could drift in and out of this state for the rest of his life.”

“It sounds terrible,” Armitage said. He refused to purr, instead keeping his voice carefully neutral. Instead he gestured to FN-2304. “And my Hound?”

“He’ll also be fine. He’s taken some kidney damage but I can repair that. I isolated the protein that caused all of this and have the computer modelling an antidote. It’s the venom from a beetle native to Parnassos. I found the write-up in Brendol’s own notes, he basically didn’t take any. Though, to be fair, I can understand a man like him not wanting his name on a report about a beetle that makes one piss themself to death.”

The Stormtroopers on guard both snickered under their helms. JN-1301 one-upped them with full laughter while TK-1959 leaned over the railing that separated the observation floor from the lab floor as though trying to get close to FN-2304 without breaking any rules.

Armitage watched as Brendol’s eyes shot open, moving to rest on him.

“Patient’s heart rate has increased,” the droid said cheerfully. “He’s going into distress.”

“Nerve block must be wearing off,” Dr. Katsuo mused. She moved to the head of the table to lean over Brendol. “I’m going to sedate you for now,” she called even as he stared at her with wide pleading eyes that begged her to do something. She motioned for the droid to change the breathing mixture. The gas changed and Brendol’s eyes drifted closed. 

“Keep an eye on his heart rate,” she commanded as she returned to slowly and methodically splitting Brendol’s skin to relieve the internal pressure.

Armitage slowly exhaled a breath he didn’t realize he was holding. He began to purr, relieved everything remained to plan.

Phasma gave him this. And in return he’d give her the Stormtrooper program. 

A favor for a favor.

*****

Brendol slowly came back to awareness.

The first thing he felt was the blasted tube down his throat breathing for him, his mouth filled with the sweet taste of bacta and the bitter taste of medical tubing. He opened heavy eyelids to the pale bright of his own personal world, the glass of the bacta tank separating him from the rest of the lab.

How did he get here?

Everything hurt with a dull ache, a burn that seemed to seep from his muscles and bones out into the very bacta itself.

Wait…

He remembered. Cardinal told him he looked terrible. He brushed the boy off, reconsidered, then checked himself into the medbay on the _Absolution_ . One of Armitage’s barely-trained Hounds was there being treated for a Parnassos beetle bite; the _Absolution_ forced to cut her patrol short to rendezvous with the _Locutor_ at Ilum to drop the Hound off with Dr. Katsuo. Then when he took ill it was decided to declare the medical emergency in order to get him treatment for…

No…

No no no NO!

He had to get word to Dr. Katsuo! He had to tell her! He’d been poisoned! Armitage did this to him. Armitage forced Phasma to take his Hounds to Parnassos and while Phasma was busy building her armor they must have stolen a beetle and somehow tagged him with it. She could synthesize an antidote, he watched her do it for the kriffing Hound!

Brendol brought a hand up to pound on the glass but paused, horror overtaking him as he saw its state. The hand was swollen almost beyond recognition, it barely looked like a hand. The skin of his forearm was carefully sliced open, but then it had ripped down his hand. The skin was almost transparent, his veins visible beneath the milky white skin. Worse, he barely felt any of it outside of a dull burn! He slammed that hand with what little force he still could against the glass.

Something beyond it answered, pressing close, and if Brendol had a voice he would have screamed. Armitage’s face was distorted by the glass, the dark spots on his snout the same black color as his solid eyes. The image leered with metal teeth, lips drawn back in a pleased snarl that wrinkled the nose just like his mother…

The image faded as Armitage pulled away. But the silhouette didn’t leave, lurking right on the edge of his vision. Instead a hand pressed itself against the glass and slowly drew down, claws slowly raking his glass prison as though trying to dig their way in. When they dropped off those claws pressed back to the top before raking down again over and over and...

“You could just talk to him.” Brendol’s heart leapt with hope as he heard Dr. Katsuo’s voice through the open comm.

“I don’t want him to feel alone,” Armitage lied. It had to be a lie, a patricidal lie told by a cannibal monster that he never should have brought with him. He should have disobeyed Sloane's orders, should never have taken it off of Arkanis. Should never have allowed the Supreme Leader to remake it into this.

“That’s why you talk to him.” Dr. Katsuo sighed as she placed her own smaller hand against the bacta tank. Brendol placed one of his own translucent hands against the silhouette of hers. “I don’t know what’s wrong with him and that frustrates me.”

“Does he know?”

“I’m not sure.” Brendol willed Dr. Katsuo to trust that he did. All she had to do was bring him out of the bacta and take the tube from his throat, then he could tell her everything. She had everything she needed to synthesize an antidote, he trusted her to do it!

“There’s no way to ask him,” she continued. “At the moment the pressure from the bacta is the only thing keeping him alive. If we try to take him out he won’t live long enough to tell us.”

Brendol tried to nod his head, of course he knew, please she needed to chance it, he was willing to risk his own life for the chance to save himself, but pain shot through his neck and back as the skin split from being stretched. The flavor of the bacta changed and Brendol watched in horror as the silhouettes moved outside.

“It’s starting,” Dr. Katsuo said. “I can increase the pressure if you…”

“There’s nothing else you can do for him,” Armitage said.

“All right.” The silhouettes shifted and Brendol realized they were both standing before the bacta tank, watching him slowly die.

“You did everything you could,” Armitage said and Brendol realized with dread that the boy was purring.

“Oh honey, you don’t have to watch.” She sounded like she was trying to comfort him! Why?!

Armitage purred louder. “No, I have to,” he said. “Let me finish this. You did everything you could for him. But there will be those among the higherrrranks that will blame you for his death. They’ll try to rrruin you. But I know better. You’re brrrilliant and I want that brrrilliance forrr myself. I’m offering you a position on Ilum.”

“I’ve heard of your ‘mad science corps’. What are you planning on Ilum?”

“If I’m rrright, Ilum will determine the fate of the entire galaxy. I want you to be a part of that.”

Brendol’s hands lost their grip on the side of the bacta tank, slowly floating down. It was no use anymore. Armitage was getting away with murder right in front of him, purring the whole while about it. Dr. Katsuo was being seduced with mad science, the opportunity to do whatever she pleased without First Order oversight to keep her in line. And Armitage had Ilum.

And Brendol…

The bright light of the bacta tank began to fade.

He let go.

*****

Dr. Katsuo watched as Brendol… dissolved. That was the only word she could think to use for what happened. The split along his spine started the process, bisecting his skin and allowing his liquefied insides to leak out. The bacta might keep the brain alive for hours yet but he would never communicate again. It would be kinder to fish the head out and let it drain but she didn’t move.

Neither did Armitage.

Whatever killed Brendol… She had to watch. It was her duty to study these things in case she ever saw it again. The next time she might be able to recognize it as a fatal condition before it advanced this far, throwing herself into research to develop a cure instead of treating the symptoms. 

The translucent skin broke apart like tissue flimsii. The muscles below it had mostly melted, as had all of the body fat. Blood vessels shattered, tainting the bacta red. Some of the organs survived at least partially intact and the bones looked undamaged. She watched the heart beating without skin or muscle to protect it, pounding in primal terror before going into a flutter and finally seizing. Eventually the brain would shut itself down in shock, only truly dying once drained of bacta.

“You don’t have to watch this,” she said.

Armitage shook his head and stayed where he was. His purr of distress rumbled through the lab, setting her on edge. She didn’t complain, she figured he was purring in a desperate attempt to keep himself calm, to remind himself he was okay. She wasn’t going to make him stop that, not now. Not ever.

Dr. Calla Katsuo knew what she had to do next.

“I accept,” she said.


End file.
